P. C. Sorcar - Prince of Magic

 

Sorcar's famous 'Cutting a lady in Half with an Electric Circular Saw' .

                                      

NK SINGH

Indrajal, the ancient Indian magic, is a great art, an art that entertains the eye and mind through suspense. It flourished in the royal courts of India. Remember King Vikramaditya, Raja Bhoj, Queen Bhanumati, for instance. Further back we find it mentioned in the epics, in the Tantra Shastras, in the Atharvaveda. Its masters kept it a secret. It was handed over from preceptor to pupil, father to son in great test secrecy. And this too much secrecy killed magic in India.

Thereafter it survived in the streets as a means of livelihood of the illiterate, impoverished Jaduwalas, with only a limited repertoire and unaware of the vast changes occuring in the magical art outside India, they continued their familiar tricks of growing trees under baskets and transferring coins and balls from hand to hand.

However, there were occasional bursts of brilliance during this long dark age in the history of Indian magic-Sheshal (19th century) who performed human suspension in mid-air and Ramosami (19th century) who could swallow glass beads and horse hair first separately and regurgitate the beads threaded later.

Dawn of Indian Magic

When the night is darkest, the dawn is close to breaking. The dawn of Indian magic broke again with the birth of Protul Chandra Sorcar on February 23, 1913, in the small town of Tangail in Mymensing district (East Pakistan). The redeeming factor at home was its artistic atmosphere .His father, Bhagwan Chandra. Sarkar and other members of his family were associated with magic and fine arts. Protul, naturally took to painting an interest he had developed and put to splendid use in designing his sets and backdrops--and magic.

Even in those days he was adept at various tricks with which he used to mystify his school fellows. But at home, learning tricks was an unstated taboo. For Bhagwan Chandra Sarkar did not want his son (who was born as a result of years of prayers and pious acts and who was the best student in the class) to take to a profession "without prospects." Caught practising a trick one day, young Protul was severely beaten.

It was through much sacrifice on the part of his parents and help from friends and relations that Protul, who had a brilliant academic career, was able to go to Calcutta to continue his studies, at the University he was a distinguished mathematics honours student.

His father intensely wanted him to become an Engineer. But Protul had made up his mind. The call of magic was irresistible. It was not for nothing that through his University career he continued to keep his interest in magic alive, poring over all available literature on legerdemain, writing articles on the subject and giving performances as often as he could. He said, "I was born into an atmosphere of magic. I breathed magic from the day I was born. How could I have become anything but a magician ?"

Neglected Art 

This decision was an act of courage. Magic was still a neglected art, the conjurer suspect, the people too cynical and sophisticated to let the art flourish. So the first job Sorcar set himself was to interpret it through articles and books in Bengali and English in Indian and foreign magazines. The foreign press was extremely critical of the claims he made for Indrajal but Sorcar went on writing as well as giving performances in the main cities of the country.

In less than four years since he had launched as a professional, he had won the attention of the Indian press. The Statesman wrote, "it was an unusual experience to see Sorcar perform...his inventiveness and imagination are gripping." The Times of India claimed, "thrilling spectacles...a new era in Indian magic seems to have begun...'

A lesser man would have been content with this success. But not Sorcar. It was not box-office alone he had in mind when he entered his profession. There was a further and higher aim: perfecting his art, improving the quality of performance, enlarging his repertoire, raising magic to the status of a fine art.

It is indeed an irony that Sorcar used to consider the year 1937 a milestone in his professional career-his first visit to Japan, which was to become his death-bed after 33 years. He was taken there by Rashbehari Bose to raise funds for the national cause. He was just 24, fresh from college. The visit was an immense success. All through those exciting days of freedom struggle, Sorcar was eagerly sought after for fund raising performances.

Prince of Magic

In due course, with growing maturity, Sorcar flung aside his western dress, and reappeared in the rich robes of the Indian Prince. It meant more than that: huge investment in new settings and costumes that drew on the legends and arts of dreaming up purely Indian miracles. The new costume raised eye-brows among western audiences. "Sorcar" someone at a Chicago performance called out" why do you wear princely clothes? You are not a prince." Pat came the reply, "Am I not the prince of magic?"* The audience thunderously applauded acceptance.

Sorcar had travelled round the world 36 times (excluding the 37th trip from which he could not return) and had performed on more occasions than he himself could remember, Wherever he went-Europe, America, the Middle East, Africa, the Far East, Australia-it had been the same story: packed audience, tickets sold out weeks in advance, rare press notices, extension of shows by public demand.

Fame & honour

America titled him TW's GM (the world's greatest magician). The Daily Mirror (London) called him "the world's master magician". The Daily Telegraph, Daily Express and Daily Herald front paged him. The New York Times crowned "a most astonishing illusion uncannily real,"

The National Broadcasting Company of New York televised his sawing of a lady in halves" from cost to cost, spending 15,000 dollars over the programme. The same feature took London by storm in 1966 when televised by the British Broadcasting Corporation. There were so many anxious enquiries about the fate of the young lady who was sawn through with an electric saw, that the telephonic system of London was jammed for more than two hours.

In the Soviet Union, which invited him, Pravda headlined him and Izvestia gave him a page of encomiums with photographs

John Mulholand, American magician and one of the editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica wrote......"In the entire world Sorcar is one of the really great magicians in his performance there is no detail so small as to be unimportant to him." 

The honours heaped on Sorcar are many: twice the Sphinx Award from New York. (Considered the Nobel Prize of magic), the Golden Laurel and Royal Medallion from German Magic Circle, Governor's Medallion. (West Bengal), Civic receptions by municipal Corporations in India and abroad. In 1964 the President of India conferred on him the title of Padma Shri Sorcar was a Fellow of Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and founder President of All-India Magic Circle.

Numberless Repertoire

Like his number water of India' in which water poured out of a jug exhaustively, his repertoire was numberless. In the middle of a piano concert, the piano used to vanish. Through a pane of glass a ravishing beauty used to emerge. A real size car drove on to the stage only to disappear into the pages of a giant book. Another rode through the air. Girls used to float in the air, materialised out of nothingness. A siren shot from a cannon and returned in a fluorescent globe, with his eyes plastered, and bandaged, Sorcar once rode a cycle through the world's heaviest traffic, in the Time Square, New York.

Sorcar was more than a practitioner of the art of magic. He was also its historian. It is perhaps solely through his efforts that magic has a literature of its own. About 20 books written by him have a global readership among professionals, dabblers and fans. Besides, he was a regular contributor to the Children's magazines.

Food for Thought

According to Sorcar "magic should not only delight but also provide food for thought. It must appeal to the intellect. He made use of some of his acts to comment on world problems.

An instance which had amused and drawn appreciative comments in the West was the Stretcher number. A Hindu and a Muslim fight each other and one of them falls dead. Two men wearing a badge inscribed "UN" appear on the scene with a stretcher. The bearers transfer the body into a stretcher, lift it and lo! The body is still where it was-flat on the ground.

"You see what I attempt to put across? Despite the best efforts of the UN, the problem as symbolised by the dead man is still there", said Sorcar, who painfully admitted that the significance of similar acts were often lost upon the Indian audience.

Modern Review

October 1971