THE VANISHING TRICK

Sh: Look, it is very difficult for me to manage the way you are blogging – or not blogging.

Na: Why?

Sh: You write some fantasy blog about starting TV, starting school, potatoes and chips etc. and then disappear for days. Then I have to keep answering people.

Na: So answer them!

Sh: How can I answer when you keep on going away like that? Are you a magician or something to do this vanishing trick?

Na: Good that you brought up the subject. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about magic. I am sort of convinced that magic is the only thing that can bring democracy properly to any country.

Sh: So, you have been reading cartoon books. Mandrake the Magician is your favorite cartoons, Is it? Or have you been watching Harry Potter Movies? Don’t tell me you intend to start a magic school like Hogwarts here.

Na: Those magical cartoons, books and movies do give lots of solutions for problems the countries face that was never solved by politics. Suppose the opposition or the ruling party members crowd in front of the speaker. If he, the speaker is a magician, can mass-hypnotise them to go back to their seats. Crowd control will be very easy for the police.

Sh: Oh, I know that Magicians are used for campaigning during elections in several places. So I will not be surprised if we find there is a strong relationships between politics and magic. Like the magician finds that the money has disappeared into thin air, he goes after it and disappears himself!

Na: In my childhood I had enjoyed magic shows. One of the favorite items was the magician taking out a 5 rupees note from someone’s pocket, make it vanish and take it out of another’s pocket.

Sh: I had also seen this. My secret theory was that the magician is richer by 10 Rupees. And don’t tell me it doesn’t happen in politics.

Na: Of course, it may be happening. And not only in politics, mind you. It may be happening in business or in sports or in any field.

Sh: Sports? I thought sports is comparatively clean.

Na: When I was a child, my uncle used to encourage us children to read newspapers. He used to tell one thing, though. ‘Concentrate on sports pages, children. Political news can be sometimes completely false and other news can be half truths. But sports is straight forward. The team either won or lost or it was a draw.’

Sh: So? Today also it is the same, no?

Na: Only to a small extent. See how many sports scams human beings are able to create these days? If you read Harry Potter, you may remember a magical potion called ‘lady luck.’ These days we hear of steroids. The performance enhancing drugs are basically ’lady luck’, no?

Sh: You said political news sometimes can be completely false. Why?

Na: I didn’t say that, my uncle said. But I think of I agree with him. The correctness of a political news (nowadays, there is no political news – only news analysis and debates) depends on who speaks what; and the newspaper you read sides with which party. But we can debate it later. Let us come back to the point. We were talking about magic.

Sh: Yeh, so what do you want to do? Start a magic school?

Na: No, I think we will start teaching magic as a compulsory subject in Naradaa School of Democracy. After all, every time a new Government comes in, people want to see some magic.

Sh: Or is it that some people, when they need, can do a vanishing trick?

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