“What kind of information?” Akbar the Great sounded suspicious, but his eyes were fixed on the crisp hundred-rupee notes in the detective’s hand.
“Baba, I need your guidance. I am investigating the murder of Dr. Jha, the Guru Buster. You must have heard that he was killed yesterday morning on Rajpath. I believe the so-called Kali apparition was nothing of the kind. It was an illusion. I would like to understand how the levitation in particular was achieved.”
Akbar surveyed him with a deep frown.
“You’re a policeman?”
“No, Baba. I am Vish Puri, the private investigator.”
“You’re working for someone?”
“Only for myself. The victim was a friend of mine.”
Akbar the Great thought for a while, stroking his long beard, and then said something in a strange language to his great-grandson. With a nod, the boy stepped forward, held out a hand for the money and took it. Then the magician said: “How it was done is irrelevant. Perhaps it was
“What do you mean by real magic?”
“Genuine miracles performed by those with genuine supernatural powers, of course.”
“You believe such things are possible?”
“The Holy Koran is full of examples. So are the Bible and Ramayan. Water can be turned to wine. Many things happen in this life that cannot be explained.”
“Do you have these powers, Baba?” asked Puri.
The old man smiled for the first time. It was a kindly, avuncular smile, the detective thought to himself.
“Alas, I’m only a humble magician,” he said. “I do simple tricks and entertain people. But what the audience believes… well, that’s another matter. When I bring a chicken back to life – as I often do – they ask me how it is done. If I tell them it is a magic trick, a sleight of hand achieved by distraction, they get very angry and accuse me of hiding something from them! To appease them I have to say that I get my powers by sleeping at the cremation ground. Then they’re satisfied and stop accusing me of being a fraud!” The magician smiled indulgently. “You see,” he added, “people need to believe in these things. They want to be fooled, but they do not want to be made fools of!”
A thought suddenly occurred to him.
“I will perform a simple trick for you,” he said. “It’s not part of my normal routine, so I don’t mind explaining how it’s done. It might help you understand how easily people’s eyes are deceived.”
Soon Akbar the Great was lying on the roof’s solid concrete surface. The boy, who was regularly chopped to pieces on the streets of Delhi only to be miraculously reassembled again, announced in a loud, confident voice: “Make obeisance to the feet of Indra, whose name is one with magic, and to the feet of Shambara, whose glory was firmly established in illusions!”
Puri watched with rapt attention.
“During his travels across the length and breadth of India, my great-grandfather Akbar the Great has collected many magical objects. Rings, cloaks that can turn you invisible, a bottle that houses a terrible djinn – heaven forbid that it should ever escape!”
The boy held up a dirty blanket.
“It was high up in the Himalayas that he was given this from a man with three eyes! Now, it may look like an ordinary blanket to you. But anyone lying beneath it will float off the ground and up into the air!”
He draped the blanket over his grandfather.
“I will now make Akbar the Great, greatest magician in all of India, float up above the roof!” he declared – and as an aside, he added with the cheeky humor characteristic of Indian street jadoo wallahs: “Let us hope Baba did not have too large a lunch or he will be too heavy!”
The boy closed his eyes, held his hands over his greatgrandfather’s body, moved them around as if he was divining for water and spoke the magic words, “Yantru-mantra-jaala-jaala-tantru!”
Nothing happened for ten seconds. He repeated his incantation. And then Akbar the Great’s body began to shudder and rise upward.
The magician floated to a height of roughly three feet and remained there, suspended in midair.
For the life of him, Puri could not see how the trick was done. There were no wires connected to the blanket; no one was holding Akbar the Great up; no box had been slipped under him; there was no trapdoor. “You’ve got some kind of lifting device under there?” he asked after the magician had gently floated back down to earth.
“The jasoos is clueless!” cackled Akbar the Great with delight. “Where are your powers of detection now, sahib?”
There were hoots of laughter from the five or six other members of Akbar the Great’s family who had by now gathered on the roof. Puri bristled; he did not like to be made a fool of.
“Are you going to tell me how it is done?” he demanded.
“I told you earlier, I got my powers at the cremation ground!”
The laughter reached a crescendo and then the magician pulled back the blanket.
Beneath lay two old hockey sticks, one on either side of him. A pair of shoes and socks identical to those Akbar the Great was wearing were attached to the ends.
“As the blanket was laid over me, you were distracted and didn’t notice when I made the switch. Then I raised the sticks under the blanket and, at the same time, elevated my head. My feet and backside remained on the floor the entire time.”
“By God! I would never have imagined it could be so simple,” exclaimed the detective in English, clapping enthusiastically. And then reverting to Hindi again he said: “But whoever killed Dr. Jha yesterday was not under a blanket. The video taken by the French tourist shows Kali floating free. How was that done?”
Akbar the Great shrugged. “That I cannot answer,” he said.
“Can you at least tell me who is capable of such a feat?”
Puri’s question was met with a stony silence. Akbar the Great said something to the boy, who in turn told Puri politely but firmly: “My great-grandfather is getting very tired and needs to rest.”
The audience had come to an end. But the detective managed to get in one last question.
“Tell me, Baba. Could a rationalist have pulled off this illusion?”
Akbar the Great shook his head. “Rationalists learn simple tricks that are done by traveling sadhus, like holding pots of boiling oil in their bare hands or piercing themselves with needles. The man you are looking for is no rationalist. He is an illusionist. Or perhaps someone who knows real magic.”
Puri and Tubelight made their way back through the slum.
The meeting had proven useful but also frustrating.
“Could be Akbar the Great is knowing the identity of the murderer,” said Puri. “Question is: Why protect him?”
“There’s probably some kind of magician’s code, Boss,” suggested Tubelight in Hindi. “If they’re anything like my family, they’re sworn never to reveal the identity of another member of the clan. Maybe the murderer’s a blood relative. In which case they’ll never give him up.”
It was only after the auto rickshaw had pulled into the main road that Puri discovered a piece of paper in one of his trouser pockets.
It had a name and address written on it.
“Manish the Magnificent. Hey Presto! GK1 M Block Market.”
He showed it to Tubelight. “Someone slipped it into my pocket!” marveled Puri.
“Want to go to GK, Boss?”
Puri checked his watch. It was nearly eight. “Jaldi challo!” he said.
Manish the Magnificent’s picture appeared on a board on the pavement outside the entrance to Hey Presto! – “magic, comedy, music and more.” He was wearing a maharajah’s garb: bejeweled turban, silken robes and fake whiskers. Puri recognized him instantly nonetheless. His real name was Jaideep Prabhu.
“So you’ve been reincarnated after so many years, is it, Jaideep?” said the detective to himself. “Takes a master of disguise to see through one, huh.”
