The pot is on the fire!
One of Venu’s favourite tricks
Venu toured the State on a scooter, blindfolded
Long ago, India’s
ace magician, P.C. Sorcar, announced by
throngs of enthusiastic people, who impatiently
waited for the great man to show up at the
appointed time – which was six ‘O’
clock. They waited for three hours, after
which a nonchalant Sorcar sauntered in with
his captivating smile, as though to say
here he was and why the ado about near nothing.
The organiser glared and
turned their watch dials his way to indicate
that, he was a good three hours late. At
which the master trickster smiled again
and offered his own time as proof. That
he was on time as it was just six ‘O’
clock now. To the masses’ utter amazement,
every dial in the auditorium showed six
‘O’ clock.
When Hyderabad’s
answer to Sorcar magic, Samala Venu called
for his interview, we arrived at 3 ‘O’
clock as an ideal time. Venu burst into
office a good half hour late, and in the
ensuring flurry of hurried introductions
and beaming smiles to all and sundry, yours
truly almost forgot the agonizing wait.
These magicians and their guiles.
Talking to him was another
experience altogether, as the effervescent
26 year old magician and hypnotist kept
this scribe enthralled for a solid hour,
hands gesticulating wildly while his mobile
face was a kaleidoscope of expressions,
all so subtle, all perfectly time.
Throughout the one hour,
Venu spoke of his art form, its market and
most important, his elaborate plans to use
magic as a novel means of mass communication
in rural areas. At the end of the conversation,
as though one had just spent time with someone
somewhat superhuman.
Magic entered Venus life
at the age of 14 when he was so mesmerized
by a performance by Prof. B.V. Pattabhiram
of the Andhra Balandam Magic and Hypnotism
school, that he quit a not too promising
sporting career to learn magic as an art.
At 14, he gave his first
stage show. Since then, he has completed
1,000 programmes all over India, in addition
to lecdems on Radio and T.V.
Everywhere this cherubic
showman went, he created a sensation and
received laudits from the press, public
and cultural organisations, for his innovative
way of presentation and novel repertoire.
In 1991, Venu held an audience
spellbound for 36 hours non-stop without
repeating a single item. This was in September.
Two months later, Venu rode blindfolded
for 3,186 kilometers on a Kinetic Honda,
covering 23 districts in his home stage.
It was with these amazing feats that Samala
Venu entered the Guinness Book of World
Records as well as the Lima Book of Records.
A magic show by Venu contains
hair raising items like, mass hypnotism,
cutting off and then joining a man’s
head from the shoulders, making coffee and
omlettes on a fire atop some ones head,
printing rupee notes and producing rabbits
and pigeons out of thin air. In spite of
having won international acclaim for his
shows, Venu is, at heart, a true son of
the soil. He plans to go into rural interiors
and propagate the effectiveness of magic
shows to transmit simple messages to the
villagers, covering a wide range of problems,
from obtaining a bank loan to increasing
productivity on the fields.
Yadgiri, a farmer from
Nizambad says, “These shows are of
immense delight to us. In them we are educated
while being pleasantly entertained after
a hard day’s work.” Sithamma,
another farmer from the same district, talks
of this “interesting babu” who
talks of cost-effective schemes while giving
us all a gala time. It won’t be long
before the magic spreads, what with more
and more banks and rural development organisations
clamouring for a chunk of the magic man’s
time.
Today, Venu is old hat
at most of his tricks, therefore he keeps
flying away to Canada to attend the conference
of IBM, the International Brotherhood of
Magicians! “I learnt a few new tricks”,
he declares with a shy smile.
What does he plan to do
with all the tricks? He would like to go
back to the villagers for nowhere else does
Venu receive the kind of sincere adulation
that the villagers shower upon him. “I
need little else to satisfy me, says a frank
Venu,” “The peals of delight
an ensuing applause is enough to fill my
stomach, and I will cherish the place these
innocent people have given me in their hearts.
I will launch a renewed campaign to propagate
magic as an art and use it for socially
beneficial purposes, not bothering about
pecuniary gain.”
Forever on the lookout
for newer, more novel ways of doing old
things, Venu spends most of his waking hours
practicing, or running off to put yet another
incredible proposal before a flabbergasted
banker. He tied the knot a couple of months
back, and has only praise for his wife,
Madhavi, who is proving to be the model
wife for a magician. She helps him to prepare
for every show while taking care of his
ancillary work. Venu’s domestic front
seems placid, which makes us ask when we
will hear patter of tiny feet on the floor.
At his he bursts out laughing and says,
“I haven’t done any magic there
as yet, that’s one show where the
pleasure is going to be all mine.”
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