INDIAN ROPE TRICK

Ishamuddin Khan (42) , with his son Aman (6) practicing the rope trick at his home in Kathputli Colony, Delhi, 11th November 2009.

He is the first person to perform a version of the Indian Rope Trick in the open, with an audience on all sides and no stage or sets in which to hide apparatus to lift the rope. Ishamuddin makes no claim to magical powers and says the trick as he performs it is a combination of street magic and illusion. Ishamuddin is an Indian 'madari' (street performer), and a member of the "Maset" - magicians caste. According to Ishamuddin Indian magicians have been performing 15-20 tricks for around 3000 years but no new ones are being thought up as there is no living to be made in the trade. More than his financially precarious livelihood Ishamuddin laments the Indian middle and upper classes' indifference or outright hostility to madaris in the country. Rather than celebrating the cultural heritage of their performing artists they seem embarrassed to promote this 'backward' impression of the country as still being a land of snake charmers, dope smoking sadus cow-worshippers and performers of the Indian Rope Trick. The new thrusting economic powerhouse and nuclear power-player determined to take its place on the world stage has no time for such frivolities.

 

Ishamuddin effectively invented the trick insofar as he is the first person to figure out a method of doing it credibly in the open air. He says he heard about the trick as a boy but is convinced that it is a relatively recent tradition as neither his father or grandfather (both magicians) performed it or knew how it was done or witnessed it being done. He heard more about the trick in more detail only in the 1980's and then spent 6 years researching and working out how he might be able to perform the trick in the open air. His first public performance was a small one in 1995 at Delhi's Qutb Minar but the major debut came in 1997 on a beach in Udupi in Karnatika in front of a reported 35,000 people.

He has since performed the trick only a further 6 or 7 times in India but many times in Europe.

The idea of the trick itself was brought to being largely due to a hoax report in the Chicago Tribune in 1890. In a book on the topic, Peter Lamont exposed the trick as a hoax created by John Elbert Wilkie while working at Chicago Tribune. Under the name "Fred S. Ellmore" ("Fred Sell More") Wilkie wrote of the trick in 1890, gaining the Tribune wide publicity. About four months later, the Tribune printed a retraction and proclaimed the story a hoax. However, the retraction received little attention. and in the following years many claimed to remember having seen the trick as far back as the 1850s. None of these stories proved credible, but with every repetition the story became more ingrained.

Lamont also notes that no mention appears before the 1890 article. Marco Polo's supposed viewing was only offered after the article was published. Ibn Batuta did report a magic trick with a chain, not a rope, and the trick he describes is different from the "classic" Indian rope trick.

 

 

PHOTOGRAPH BY AND COPYRIGHT OF SIMON DE TREY-WHITE

 

+ 91 98103 99809

+ 91 11 435 06980

+44 07966 405896

+44 1963 220 745

email: simon@simondetreywhite.com

 

Done