The Great Indian Rope Trick
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In the 20th century
RUSKIN BOND, Why the Great Indian Rope Trick isn’t a myth, December 9, 2018: The Times of India
Everyone has heard of the great Indian rope trick, but I am probably the only person who has actually seen it performed.
It was many years ago, when I was wandering around in the small towns of North India, making a living by writing the occasional story or newspaper article and staying in cheap hotels or small rented rooms.
I was visiting Kalsi on the road to Chakrata, with the intention of writing a piece on the rock edicts of the great King Ashoka, edicts which had survived on stone for thousands of years.
On a hillock nearby, a small but lively crowd had collected — mostly village folk from the surrounding farmlands — and like most rustic folk, they were more interested in magic than in history. Come to think of it, so was I!
The object of their interest was a man in a mustardcoloured robe, accompanied by a skinny young boy wearing nothing but a loincloth or langoti. With the help of his acolyte, the man had been performing various feats of magic, to the amusement of the gathering.
The magician claimed that he could invert the order of nature, and someone in the crowd challenged him to produce out of thin air, a bunch of coconuts, well knowing that coconuts grew by the sea and not in the Himalayan foothills.
“Well, you won’t find coconuts growing here,” said the magician, “but perhaps there are some to be found above the clouds, in the land of the gods.”
“But how are we to fetch them?” asked the boy.
“I have the means,” said the man and proceeded to take from a large round tin box a cord some tens of feet in length. After carefully arranging the cord he threw one end of it high up in the air — and there, to everyone’s astonishment, it remained as if caught by something. He now paid out the rope, which kept going up higher and higher until it disappeared in the mist, leaving only a short length in his hands.
He then told the crowd that as he was too heavy to climb the rope himself, he would ask the boy to do so. And handing the end of the rope to the boy, he told him to go ahead.
At first the boy demurred, saying that if he fell from a great height, he would surely be killed. But on being thumped on the head by his angry mentor, he seized the rope and swarmed up it, looking rather like a small spider running up a hanging thread on a web!
In a few moments, the boy was out of sight, and the crowd fell silent, wondering what would happen next.
Presently down fell a large coconut, a real coconut, which the pleased magician presented to someone in the crowd. It was followed by several more coconuts.
Then suddenly the rope came down, without the boy and the magician shrieked, “Someone has cut the rope! What will my boy do now?”
A minute later, down came the boy’s head. It bounced on the ground like a coconut. This was followed by the boy’s arms, legs and body all falling on the ground one after another.
The mesmerised crowd had been watching these rattling events in horror and amazement when suddenly the lid of the tin box flew open and the boy popped out and bowed to the crowd.
A cheer went up and coins were thrown to the smiling perfor mers. The perfor mers thanked the crowd with folded hands.
How had they done this trick — if indeed it was a trick? Mesmerism, hypnotism, the powers of suggestion?
The coil of rope was back in its box, the fallen limbs were nowhere to be seen.
As the magician passed me, he smiled and held out a coconut, which I took in both hands. It seemed to quiver as I held it!
Then as I looked down at the coconut, I saw it change into a human face. Two eyes looked out at me and a wide mouth broke into a sly grin. This transformation lasted only for seconds and then it was a coconut again.
I dropped the coconut. It rolled away and was seized upon by several street urchins who made off with it.
I turned to see if the magician was still around, and was just in time to catch a glimpse of the man and the boy and the tin box as they disappeared into the crowd — into the mystery and multitude that was India.
