He doesn't like to be called a magician. Neither does he wear any gaudy robe while performing. Yet, he surprises all with stunning tricks.

Just as anyone around, he comes near you, cracks jokes and engages you. In between he casually asks you to do something unfurling his amazing trick.

It is not quite often that one gets to see tricks performed at close quarters. But A.P.Rakesh Syam is exactly all about `close up magic'.

For the 29-year-old Madurai resident, entertaining people runs in his blood. His parents owned a circus company and made people happy with their performances. But Rakesh's inspiration came from a street snake charmer. "Yes. It is long time back. The hand movement of the snake charmer impressed me. It was in a ballet style. The flair with which he was able to keep the public spell bound amazed me. I learnt later that he was an illiterate. That sparked a desire in me. When an illiterate is able to hold many educated public spell bound, why not me?" Rakesh recalls his thoughts as a seven year old.

From then on he started collecting literatures on various tricks. It was not easily available and he had to run pillar to post to get the addresses of famous magicians and wrote letters in hundreds seeking their help to learn tricks.

Hard task

"It was a hard task. I was desperate at that time to learn a trick. I used to write countless number of letters to magicians but the response was one to 500. Whenever I received a positive response from a magician, it used to be a day of rejoice. Some tricks were not practically possible to perform. But I simplified and customized them accordingly to an astounding success", he shares the struggles of his early years.

Though there are a lot of genres in magic, Rakesh took to close up magic since he liked the way it was performed. "I always had the desire to move closely with public. On the face, close up magic looks easier, but actually it is not. Your hand movement should be precise and you should be able to impress the audience with your communication skills. To get my hand movements perfectly correct I used to sit in from of the mirror for hours practicing", he says.

Rakesh's role models are David Copperfield, Lance Burton, Jay Sankey and Michael Amar. Now working as an entertainer in a Cruise Liner of an American Company, he constantly updates himself to come out with new tricks every week.

"The secret lies in improvisation. You have to be well informed of what is happening around the world as you have to engage your audience with relevant and interesting information".

Rakesh's social concern is evident from the fact that he does a lot of social service. Recently, he performed tricks to entertain AIDS patients, so that they could forget their illness for a brief period.

Give him a piece of paper, rubber band, chalk piece, a wrist watch or just about anything and he will perform a trick that will leave you impressed to the core.

But his lament is the social stigma prevailing in the country where magic is still a taboo career.

Article with Photo         Article in The Hindu