Left with little tricks to survive, magicians turn to sundry jobs
The Hindu
Magicians have faced immense challenges due to the pandemic, from reduced stages to perform to damaged props and financial struggles. Despite their successes, they are struggling to make ends meet and support their families.
For someone who has been a magician over the last three decades, 50-year-old Sathyan Sankar is now left with little tricks in his bag in the face of challenges thrown up by life.
Stages to perform and earn a livelihood were reduced to a trickle even before, and the pandemic simply snuffed out what little was left. Realising that magic alone would not bring food to his table, Mr. Sankar, a resident of Alappuzha, has tried many things from selling chips and setting stages to delivering couriers. Not having the money to fulfil his elder daughter’s dream of pursuing nursing, Mr. Sankar has kept her admission on hold.
“I had performed in schools as part of awareness campaigns against drugs. Later, when I approached the panchayat for such anti-drugs campaigns, I was told that there were not enough funds. Instead, they offered me a free stage to perform without pay,” said Mr. Sankar, who attended a three-day international convention of magicians that concluded here on Tuesday.
Manu Mankombu, another magician, had a similar tale to share. A magician who shot to fame with his countless fire escapes, Mr. Mankombu could not escape the fury of the 2018 deluge when his magic props worth around ₹25 lakh kept in an old building next to his house in Kuttanad were fully submerged. “I had to make 32 visits to the Secretariat in the years since then to get compensation before I was paid ₹3 lakh,” he said.
He performed on 137 stages in the just concluded season and was feted as the magician with the most number of performances. But he is left with very little to show for it, considering 15 other artists and their families are dependent on him. So, to bridge the gap in his income, the magician now runs a banana chips shop while also working as a fisherman and a driver.
Haridas Thekkeyil has 28 State, 16 national and three international recognitions in honour of his skills as a magician. But when a fall during the pandemic left him bedridden for one-and-half-years, all that the 54-year-old could think of was doing a vanishing act forever. While he has come out of his disturbing thoughts since then, the struggle to run his family remains. “I am so passionate about magic to think about anything else. But the stages have dropped drastically, and so has the fee,” he said.