Of illusions and magic

Over dinner this evening, a friend waxed eloquent about illusionists who perform on TV and the sheer “magic” of their performances. This friend is an erudite, almost-50 year old who has recently stepped out of the commercial rat-race after holding important, key positions in it for years! And hence, this friend is by no stretch of the imagination either naïve or credulous!
But as he spoke of how he never misses a single episode of this show or that and then breathlessly recounted an entire episode or two, complete with grand gestures and impromptu vocal sound effects designed to impress, he appeared to have moved rapidly back in time and had clearly morphed into a 6 year-old with wide eyes and all the wonderment of innocence of that tender age!

I watched, transfixed! Not because I was swept up by the sudden enthusiasm my friend showed for what I consider “childish” entertainment, but I was impressed by the guileless eyes, the over-eager breathlessness, the need to convince that he displayed for those brief minutes! Yes, here was a child telling me about something that fascinated him, about something he desperately wanted to share with someone!

In my mind flashed the recent status messages of the more World Cup-crazed of my friends: how they instantaneously flashed their reactions to a game taking place in real time on another continent! Thus, while Sonali from Mumbai was grandiloquent in her lofty pronouncements, with all the elegance of language one associates with one of her training and breeding, others (Bhavesh from London, for example) were more pithy and down-to-earth, with a lot of “f**k” and whatnot thrown about like coriander and grated coconut on sabudana khichadi ! The linguistic analysis (and culinary comparisons) apart, those status messages, too, were the hasty, breathless, sharings of individuals who, for the duration of the World Cup tournament, have morphed into creatures who live, breathe, and exude football and the intricacies of the game! Although I know full well that they are otherwise normal, sentient contributors to the society they live in! Just like my friend went into a seizure over illusionists this evening!

What seems to get into these people? Is it the wonderment that something can be so wonderfully enjoyable, so invigorating, so fascinating? Is it that that “something” overpowers all other emotions and drives them to share, share, and share in an outburst of passion? That it morphs them into kids who look at our world wide-eyed as an illusionist makes doves appear out of thin air, or into fans who cannot believe that a ball kicked viciously in yet another attempt at a goal has nonchalantly sailed over the net?
I am not quite sure, really, but it all makes life magical, just the same!