What does magic taste like? For an art form, the fruits of which are most of the times intangible and momentary, this might seem like a pointless question. But ask the same to those who gathered at Manaveeyam Veedhi for a street magic performance by Shamsudheen Cherpulassery and they will tell you that magic tastes tangy, like raw mangoes.
Shamsudeen, who claims to be the only magician in the world who can do the ‘Indian Green Mango Trick,’ was easily one of the star attractions at the day-long cultural festival. The trick starts with a mango seed, which he passes around to the crowd to make sure that it is indeed a seed. On the ground is placed a pot filled with soil. He proceeds to bury the seed in the soil in the pot.
Later, he covers it and uses a snake charmer’s horn, apparently to make the seed sprout and grow. A minute later, he removes the cover and there stands a mango sapling. He cuts two leaves from it, breaks it and passes it to the crowd, to test it. He covers the pot again and blows the horn as if to further charm the sapling into growing up. The cover is removed again and the audience gasps in wonder at the sight of a small mango tree with a few mangoes hanging.
He calls audience members to pluck the mangoes, cut it and pass it around.
“This is perhaps the first time that you are tasting magic. Eat to your heart’s content,” says Shamsudheen. It is the street magician’s master trick, the secret of which many a magician from the country and abroad has asked him about. But he is reluctant to reveal it, except to his sons.
“People have offered me crores for this trick. I do not make much money. I do not wear coats or hats and I live in a Laksham Veedu colony. But, I am not ready to part with a trick which my forefathers developed,” says Shamsudeen, in his trademark slang.
Other than the mango trick, he has another popular trick of digging out gold coins from the ground, a trick which many in the audience wanted to learn. “All of this is not real. If this was real, would I actually take a train and come to perform here in the street,” he says.
He is also an expert at handling snakes and has donned the snake charmer’s role in quite a few Malayalam films. But, it is the mango trick which makes him a unique performer among magicians.
