SORCAR SORCERESS
MANEKA SORCAR Magician
The applause dies out and the auditorium falls silent again as illusionist Maneka Sorcar, dressed in a bejewelled pantsuit, moves on to her next act. She pulls in a vertical crate on wheels, slightly larger than a coffin, painted and perforated to resemble a condominium, and opens it from all four sides to show that it is empty. Two of her assistants, playing the parts of parents in this dramagic narration on space crunch in metros, step into it and are locked away. Maneka then begins inserting long cylindrical blocks of wood into the perforations, the couple inside still visible through other openings, and pushes them in till they come out from the holes on the other side. Once done, she turns and smiles at the spectators, and flicks her hand. When she pulls out the blocks and opens the door, the couple steps out smiling and unharmed. There is the sound of a doorbell, and the crate is opened again to reveal two kids. The bell rings again and out come the grandparents. The third bell is almost drowned by loud clapping and laughter. This time, it is the domestic help who steps out with the family’s dog.
“Unlike in a movie or on TV, there are no retakes or editing at a live show,” says Maneka, 36. “You have to be a quick thinker because you do not meet the same spectators every day. Their profile changes, as does their level of intelligence and EQ. I may be performing in New York one day, Delhi the next and a two-tier city in West Bengal the day after. The dynamics are different every day and you should know how to mould yourself accordingly. You have to make allowances for mishaps which you cannot foretell, while making it all look effortless,” she says.
The daughter of Prodip Chandra Sorcar Junior, and the granddaughter of Protul Chandra Sorcar aka the father of modern Indian magic, Maneka, is the ninth generation of Sorcar magicians. “It took nine generations to produce one Maneka,” she says. The eldest of PC Sorcar’s three daughters, she is the only one to become a professional illusionist.
“I am a magician by choice,”
says Maneka. “My father gave me complete freedom to do whatever I wanted to do.” When she expressed a desire to take up magic, he advised her to complete her studies first (she has an MBA degree). “He told me becoming a magician was not going to be easy,” she says.
Traditionally, magicians have been men. And women, their assistants at best. Even today there are very few female illusionists in the world. “Everything from the props to the costumes is fashioned around men. In the West, women are no better than props and used for their sex appeal and to divert the audience’s attention from the magician,” says Maneka.
So when she started out with her independent stage production, Maya Vigyan, in 2007, Maneka realised that failing was not an option. “If I failed, people would not say that Maneka could not do it. They would say women cannot do it,” she says. Prior to that she had been working on and off with her father while still a student.
Though Kolkata is home, her work takes her across the world and Maneka performs around 200 to 250 shows in a year. Maneka, who is married to businessman Sushmit Ranjan Halder, says she loves it when the initial scepticism of her audience is transformed into wideeyed wonder at the end of a show. Her oeuvre consists of classical acts with twists and contemporary acts, which “are all my own”. Maneka has bicycled on the waters of the Ganges in 2008 and when her father vanished the Taj Mahal for two minutes in 2000, she brought it back.
Maneka’s unusual childhood spent helping her parents behind and onstage, understanding the science that went into making the illusions, playing with “pet lions, an elephant, two camels, one emu bird and two pythons” prepared her to carry forward her family’s legacy. “I worked my way up as an assistant and gained hands-on experience,” she says. Maneka is next working on a gravity-defying act.
Magic essentially is the forerunner of science, says Maneka. But in this age of technology where palm-sized gadgets can do stuff that would be considered magical a few decades ago, and there exist a zillion avenues of entertainment, how does magic stay relevant? Maneka believes magic shows will never lose their charm because humans are always hungry to witness the miraculous. “Look at the popularity of the Harry Potter books, mythological fiction, or movies like The Prestige, people are always hungry for miracles,” she says.
“In the West, women are no better than props, meant to divert the audience’s attention from the magician”