How did Pradip Amladi, Rakesh Syam and Praveen know things they possibly couldn’t?
One boy from the audience was asked to think of a number on the dice. Pradip Amladi read his mind and revealed the correct number. Another girl was asked to draw something without showing it to anybody. Praveen read her mind and drew an identical image on another paper. A gentleman was asked to reveal his ATM card PIN number. He refused. Rakesh then asked him to just think about the last two digits while he read his mind and made a grid with 12 numbers, which when added from any vertical, diagonal and horizontal row added up to the last two digits of the PIN!
The invitees were treated to an evening of such para-psychological mind games and more by the trio at an amazing Mind show organised by Hotel Fortune Pandiyan. The evening was supposed to have two performers – Pradip, a chartered accountant from Mumbai, whose Mynd Storm skilfully takes the audience to a world of altered reality and Rakesh Syam, a close-up magician from Madurai who has made it big in USA’s cruise lines. But Dubai-based engineer Praveen who had actually come to see the show took to the stage to give a display of his passion, magic.
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Together, the three filled the next two hours with laughter, amazement, interaction and impressive mind reading acts that left the audience spellbound. And Mind Square became Mind Cube riding high on mind boggling mystery and pure entertainment.
Each of them known for their respective signature experiments and trick, cleverly and intellectually stimulated the lesser known oddities and abilities of the adult human mind. How did you do it? I asked all three and pat echoed an answer: “Oh! Very Well!”
This congenial humour laced with suspense and awe drove the 10 inexplicable acts. The audience was kept engaged all through also with underlying motivational messages, inspirational quotes and funnily straight conversations. Like Pradip began by asking one simple question to the audience – How many of you believe in reincarnation? One hand went up and he immediately responded, “Welcome Back, Sir!”
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It was his dream car project that left the audience mesmerised. He randomly asked people to read his mind and help him choose his dream car from the various options that were beamed on the screen for the model, colour, make, company, name etc. And finally what the various members from the audience chose matched what Pradip actually had in mind before the show and had recorded in a slide to be shown at the end of the show!
Praveen almost shocked the audience by correctly telling the name of a pet dog that belonged to a person seated in the audience. He even gave the exact description of the dog that was the gentleman’s childhood friend and had died years ago. Similarly, he revealed the name of a teacher of another lady in the audience. He just asked her to close her eyes and think about her classroom in school which she attended at the age of 12.
Call it the sixth sense or a world of make-believe, the audience enjoyed the psychological entertainment, which Pradip calls the “world of altered reality”. Persistent questioning on how he does it, Pradip smiles, “I use the power of suggestion”. “There is no hypnotism involved, no messing up with people’s minds or embarrassing them,” he says.
Rakesh, who stunned with his card and rope tricks, was equally energetic, good humoured and communicative. Inspired and impressed by an illiterate snake charmer when he was a small boy growing up in Madurai, Rakesh believes in and exhibits magic from close quarters. “I like the way close up magic is performed, he says. It demands more precision and practice. Give me anything and I will come up with a fascinating trick,” he says.
All three make it very clear that as mind readers or illusionists, whatever ideas they come up with, they are only to be sold and not to be told! Given the unfathomable mysteries of the human mind, the show did turn out to be uncommon and uncanny. It underlined that entertainment is not just mindless but cerebral too.