Mystic Magic

I am a big Harry Potter fan. But don't worry this blog is not about him. I guess too much of the real and virtual space has already been devoted(or wasted) on him for me to add nething more to it. Well...the inspiration for this blog comes from the recent news about the actor Mohanlal venturing into the world of magic. But this blog is not about him either. That news actually transported me back to the first magic show that I ever saw but which I don't remember, at least , not that vividly. But right through the junior school we used to have one puppet show and one magic show to look forward to every year.
As far as I can I remember , initially the Magic Show just filled us with awe and amazement . But slowly as we grew older it was more to do with: "I know how u did it"; at least for most of my classmates. But not for me.....simply because "I didn't know how they did it".This is one big confession I would like to make here:"I seriously couldn't understand how the Magic tricks were performed." It used to happen with me so often. Here we were, watching some silly trick ,of the ball coming out of nowhere,etc; I used to wonder how he did it. But then I would hear others saying loudly:"You call this magic?....It was clearly visible that he brought out the ball from under his cloak". When? Where? How come I missed it? And so the story continued at every magic show.
I am sure people like me are ne magician's delight. A person so easily fooled by even the same old trick of cards and coins. But one day I realised something even more profound:"People who say they know how the trick was performed just think they know how it was done." Once at such magic show some trick was performed. I don't remember what the trick was about. But I remember that just after the trick got over I heard the same old muttering around me and saw the bored faces and I knew that I was again the only person fooled. Then surprisingly the magician asked everyone whether ne one knew the secret behind that trick. All hands went up (i knew i was bad; but this bad?). He asked for a few opinions. People starting yelling from all directions. First of all the opinions were all different. That relieved me a little bit. At least there was ambiguity. He listened to them patiently and removed everything that people said he had used to perform the trick. Then he performed the trick again with the same old results. There was silence. I asked my friends for the explanation as if I was on the Magician's side. There was a looooooooooooooong pause before ne one spoke. After some time there were explanations again showing the same defiance but not the same confidence.
Not much has changed since then. I was able to catch up with a magic show last year and I realised that age hadn't wisened me up in this regard.People say magic exploits the limitations of brain using Science and dexterity of hands.Be it Taj Mahal disappearing in front of our eyes or a person staying without food in a caged box for months and coming out alive. It is just an illusion. But lets not get into the "MATRIX" mode. I will save that for some other blog or on the second thoughts, may be not....Too much has been written about it too.