Muthukad foretells their story before writers finish thinking

New programme, ‘Magical Realism’ lives up to its name

Kozhikode: Magician Gopinath Muthukad staged yet another feat here by successfully foretelling the contexts and climax of a story well before a team of writers could finish conceiving it.

Titled, ‘Magical Realism’ the show held at the Town Hall here on 21st of September started with a group of randomly selected authors from the audience entering the magician’s stage. At first, two boxes labelled ‘story chests’ were introduced. The first box, locked and placed at the rear end of the audience carried a number of smaller boxes, the smallest of which contained a blank banner. The second one was hanging from the roof of the stage adding suspense.

Audience were allowed to ask any writer of their choice to tell the contexts of the story. Each author started to make the story impressive. All these time, without any lapse, emerging ideas were astutely noted down by the magician using different colour pens on a big canvass sheet.

Once the authors’ dais completed telling the contexts, the ‘story chest’ at the rear of the audience was opened. The empty banner inside was no more empty. It contained exactly the ideas generated by the writers’ forum. Colour and content were also exactly matching to that on the canvass sheet. Not over, popping up another wonder, the second story chest hanging on the stage was opened to find a sheet of paper telling the story in its complete form. The magician read out the enchanting expansion of the story to receive a thunderous applause. The authors expressed their wholehearted approval of the magician’s story that was nothing different from what they carried in their minds. Finally, audience roared in excitement as a bike mentioned by the authors appeared on the stage, bearing exactly the same registration number. The climax of the magic programme was thus living up to its name, ‘Magical Realism’.

Along with audience, participating in the story-making discussion were writers including Akbar Kakkattil, Indu Menon and Subhash Chandran among others. Earlier, the programme was chaired by Dr. M.G.S. Menon and inaugurated by the writer turned District Collector, K.V. Mohankumar. Literary figures including Dr. M.M. Basheer, U.A. Khader and T.R. Ajayan spoke on the occasion. Chief architect of the magic programme, Gopinath Muthukad gave introductory speech. Director of the Magic Academy, Chandrasenan Mithirmala delivered welcome speech and District Information Officer, Khader Palazhi recorded vote of thanks.