An illusionist’s quest to do a vanishing act on barriers for the disabled

Magician Gopinath Muthukad, who is doing a first-of-its-kind magic-themed all-India tour to raise awareness on people with disability, speaks to The Hindu on the sidelines of his show in Bengaluru

It’s houseful at an auditorium in Vidyaranyapura. In front of the audience, on stage, is renowned illusionist and magician Gopinath Muthukad, shredding a newspaper sheet into pieces. He holds up the pieces in his right arm. Swish, goes his hand, and the paper is back in one full piece.

In magic, it’s an age-old trick. But then Muthukad adds his own touch to it.

“A moment ago, this paper was torn into pieces. All it took was a magical touch to restore it. With a magical touch from all of you, we can create an inclusive India,” he says.

The 60-year-old magician, who retired from professional magic in 2021, has been running Different Art Centre (DAC), an initiative aimed at empowering children with disabilities to explore their artistic talents. According to Muthukad, it was a show in Kerala’s Kasaragode, where he met endosulfan victims, that inspired him to start the centre.

Three years later, he is back on the stage again, this time for an all-India magic-themed tour named ‘Inclusive India’ to raise awareness about disabled people and the need for inclusion. The event is backed by the Department of Empowerment with Persons with Disabilities and the Ministry of Social Justice and Development.

On the sidelines of the show in Bengaluru, he spoke to The Hindu.

Your last tour was 14 years ago. What is the relevance of the Inclusive India campaign now? 

The last campaign in 2010 was for the Indian army. Vismay Swaraj Yatra was the last tour conducted for the public. It was in 2007.  

Then, in 2021, I retired from my professional magic career. For the last five years, I have been giving my 100% to running DAC.

It has given me new learnings and showed me how important it is for our larger society to be inclusive and how crucial it is to build awareness of this. I realised how far ahead many other countries are compared to us in terms of inclusivity. Only if all stakeholders come together with the support of the larger public can we achieve the goal of an inclusive society. 

It’s very important that we build awareness regarding this among the public. The government departments are taking several measures in this regard. But often, it doesn’t reach the public.  

Hence this tour. It is an effort to take those measures to the public and build awareness around it. 

The next question was ‘how’. 

Magic can engage people and convey something through it. So here I am in a magician’s robe again to build awareness of inclusivity. I believe this is a first-of-its-kind initiative in India where a group, through art, tries to build awareness around inclusivity across the country.

Give us a glimpse of how the tour would take shape 

It commenced on October 6 and would culminate on December 3, which is International Disability Day. Across 36 venues, 41 events have been planned. The entire tour would be by road. Seven people, including my crew members, and I would keep travelling, while students of DAC who perform in each venue would come directly to the location. 

I believe travelling by road would render it more meaningful. When we take up an initiative like this, we have the responsibility to put in certain efforts also. Hence the decision to travel by road.

Another intention is to understand how the country has changed. I was curious to experience the differences that have happened in about 20 years. 

It seems that you have strived to reinvent magic and make it socially relevant throughout your career

A magician can create only 13 wonders using magic. New mysteries are a creation of the mix and match of these tricks. It’s imperative to do that if you need to keep enthralling the audience. 

To create a magic show that is connected to inclusivity or any other socially relevant topic is not easy. It’s a result of long and exhaustive research.  

We need to select a topic, find the possibility of magic and entertainment in it, we need to ensure that people enjoy it.  

For example, at the beginning of the show in Bengaluru, I performed a ‘passing the parcel’ trick using a watch. Then it was connected to an acronym for Words, Actions, Thoughts, Collaboration and Humaneness (WATCH), linking it with inclusivity.

For such ideas, you need to brainstorm a lot. 

As we keep going, we might get new ideas. For example, before our show in Bengaluru commenced, social worker Fr. George Kannanthanam made a few of us walk around the auditorium blindfolded. He wanted to show us how difficult it can be for a visually impaired person to navigate.

It’s something that we can incorporate into our upcoming shows because the blindfold act is something that has been practised in magic for ages. We will keep adding such new ideas as the tour progresses, and by the time it ends, it will have a very new form enriched by all such ideas and experiences.

How much time did you spend on research and planning? 

It took almost a year. In each location, we want to collaborate with the official departments and institutions there. That helps us to reach the main stakeholders. So, coordination of all that, designing the show, content and travel map, and so on took time.  

If you look at the travel route, you can see it’s not a straight route. We are trying to cover almost all the states. 

We are living in the age of social media where attention span is lesser and magic tricks are being revealed by influencers. At a time like this, is magic a waning industry? How much scope does magic as a career hold? 

The scope of magic is immense, no matter what changes happen around us. As long as people continue to be curious and are willing to be amazed, magic will thrive. But it’s important that we do novel experiments with it.

Magic tricks being revealed aren’t new. Earlier, it was done on TV, now on social media. But there is always the possibility of innovation. 

I never tell people I’m going to entertain them. My intention is to say something to them. So, I perform and then connect it to the message which I want to convey. This tour has also been designed like that. We hope that it will become a big success. 

By the time it culminates in Delhi, there will be representatives from all states as performers. In that sense, it will be a national festival. 

Published - October 10, 2024 07:24 am IST