Just mind games: Indian mentalists are busting the ‘chamatkar’ myth | India News – Times of India

Karan Singh, a Delhi-based mind reader and magician, says the abuse in his inbox has been piling up ever since he went live on a television debate to debunk some claims made by a selfstyled godman from Madhya Pradesh. In televised clips, the baba can be seen summoning followers to the stage. He asks them to chant, and writes something down on a piece of paper. He then asks them to tell him about their problems. In the end, he reveals the writing on the piece of paper: Voila! The problem and its solution are already scribbled on it. He and his followers claim that it’s a miracle, and the result of long years of sadhana.
Singh, who has performed for Hrithik Roshan and figured out Shah Rukh Khan’s ATM pin, is part of a growing tribe of mentalists in India who are coming out and challenging the claims of such godmen. “I am not questioning anyone’s faith. I am just saying you should not be a blind follower. You should ask questions,” he adds. Singh and fellow mentalist Suhani Shah have gone on live television, and revealed the names of anchors’ children, correctly guessed the illnesses troubling relatives of audience members, and more. However, they’ve done this with a disclaimer: that they are not supernatural beings, and their tricks are all a part of the art of mentalism. The performing art focuses on things like mind reading and fuses elements of psychology with theatrics, magic tricks, and showmanship. It focuses a lot on observation of people’s bodily movements, visual cues, and the slightest of changes in reactions to prompts. Unlike magic, which relies on grand acts of illusion, deception, and trickery to elicit reactions from the crowd, mentalists claim theirs is a more psychological form of art.
While most mentalists are selftaught, they rely heavily on something called neuro-linguistic programming. NLP focuses on studying the language of the brain, with a major focus on visual cues. “If I tell you to think about a gun, you do not think about the alphabets making up the word, you visualize it. You might speak a language, but when you think, you think in pictures,” explains Akshay Kumar, a trained psychologist and a senior research fellow at the Indian Council of Medical Research. Picking on these visual cues is a crucial part of NLP training, something that mentalists rely on. Typically, a mentalist asks questions or gives prompts that make people picture their answers in their heads visually. Then, they decode the changes in the body and faces of the audience members while they picture these, and guess the answers.
Mentalists are trained to notice the slightest of changes in the cues. For instance, the eyes move in different directions when any form of mental activity is happening inside the human brain, explains Kumar. If one is remembering a picture from one’s past, the eyeballs move to the top right corner. If one is constructing an event, they move to the top left. In case someone is trying to remember a voice from the past, they shift to the right. A movement to the bottom right means a self-dialogue is going on. These are all involuntary reactions, and just one of the many cues which lie detectors also track. The use of sound, lighting and different forms of touch are also used to change the sense of perception.
The ability to create a controlled situation is key to making these acts appear real. “The so-called is doing it in a darbar, while I do it in my shows,” Singh says.
Narpath Raman, a Bengaluru-based mentalist who has been performing for over 11 years, admits that he has sometimes been accused of using black magic by a few onlookers. Now, he starts with a disclaimer. “The first line in all my shows is that what you’re about to see is not real. Then I create something that looks and feels like genuine mindreading,” Raman says. It’s similar to watching a film, he adds. For the duration of the movie, audiences believe the actor is the character they are playing.
While the awareness about mentalism in India is growing, it’s not as popular as it is in the West thanks to performers like David Copperfield and Blaine. However, the rising fascination means that the small pool of performers is high in demand. Singh, who started performing magic tricks at the age of 11, has done shows across the world, attended private parties for celebrities such as Shah Rukh Khan and Virat Kohli, and is a regular at corporate events. Raman adds that the pay is better than the regular magic shows. He hopes to one day have a Netflix show, like the globally popular mentalist Derren Brown. Suhani Shah has managed to create a huge social media following of over five million subscribers across YouTube and Instagram. Nakul Shenoy is another well-known mentalist.
Such is the demand that Raman, and a few other mentalists, now teach the basics of the performative art to people. Raman’s self-learning, video-based workshops already have over 20,000 students enrolled. A select few are given more in-depth training. Shah has tied up with online learning platform Unacademy to give lessons. But Raman underlines the fact that there is nothing supernatural or ‘chamatkari’ about their feats. “We only appear to be supernatural, and that too after a lot of training,” he says.