With many tricks up his sleeve

MAGICAL MOMENTS

Karun Krishna P’s fascination with magic began at the age of three. At first, his parents thought it was just a phase that he would get over soon.

But not one to give up, Karun kept himself glued to television and watched professional jadugars perform. That’s when his father decided to learn a couple of tricks. “My parents were surprised because there is no other magician in the family. For my sake, my father would learn tricks and teach me. He also started looking for a tutor,” recalls the second-year engineering student from RR Institute of Technology.
Since he was just three years old then, no tutor was willing to teach him.

“So I would just watch performances on television. I was enamoured by the tricks but couldn’t figure them out. It was a real struggle for my parents to find me an instructor,” he says. When a tutor was finally ready to train him, he was asked to solve a couple of puzzles. “I did them in a jiffy and that’s when my master realised that I had potential. My dad continued to help me too,” says Karun. In fact, whenever the kids at his playschool cried, Karun would entice them with magic.

In 1999, Karun did his first corporate show. Over the years, he has done over a 1,000 shows and says that the challenge lies in doing something new every time. “I don’t want the people, especially those who come for the second time, to get bored of seeing the same tricks.

Sometimes, just changing the end of a trick makes a lot of difference,” says Karun, adding, “My tricks depend on the crowd. What works at a birthday party may not work at a launch.” Karun has done a number of TV shows and performed for functions hosted by the Rajkumar family, Ambarish, late Vishnuvardhan, Kamal Hassan, Saif Ali Khan and Sameera Reddy.

“I have made blunders on stage but always rectified them in time. That’s why it’s important to be as talkative as I am,” he laughs. However, he says it’s hard to do the same under the watchful eyes of judges at competitions. “The slightest movement is observed closely and pointed out,” he says.

But that hasn’t stopped him from winning every competition he has gone for. “So far, I’ve got the first prize in every competition I have taken part in the junior category,” he beams. Ask him about the practice involved and pat comes the reply, “Not much. But it involves a lot of planning. And I hardly get nervous.”

Karun is still learning and also gives lessons. Right from the diminishing cards’ act to the dove act and even the cane to fan act, the 20-year-old wizard has many tricks up his sleeve. So how does he balance his academics and passion? “In school, I was a good student. But it’s getting hard now. Although I wasn’t keen on pursuing engineering, I took it up because my parents felt I needed a degree to fall back on.

Now, I think I will work as an engineer for a few years and continue to be a magician as well,” he says. On being asked about the secret behind his tricks, he jokes, “I will lose my job if I reveal any tricks of the trade.”