India Today: The Road Not Taken

Three young men have managed to do what most of us only dream of.

By Nirmala Ravindran. July 9, 2010.

From designing watches to reading minds, and being a virtual helping hand, three Bangaloreans decided to chart some unknown territories. Simply Bangalore talks to these young men to know what it took to turn their passion into their profession.

Story of design: Abhijit Bhansod

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In search of Mandrake: Nakul Shenoy

Think of a shape, and Nakul Shenoy will draw it on paper for you. Try adding a colour to the shape (all in your mind) and he’s likely to say, “Try another colour, everyone goes for red.” Just when you’re suitably bewildered, he’ll ask you to hide a coin in one of your palms and put both out in front-and he’ll guess right the first time.

Forget the real coin and now just imagine the coin in one of your hands and he will guess that, too. Welcome to the world of Nakul Shenoy. “I can really read your mind,” he says. But for him, mind reading is only a part of the bigger show, which is a combination of hypnosis, auto suggestion, reading body language and communication. “I have my own bag of tricks. But at the end of the day, my only aim is to entertain, whether in a corporate set-up or otherwise,” he says.

An introduction to a comic strip super hero left five-year-old Shenoy with an ambition that continues till date-to be like Mandrake, the ultimate magician. “I started doing shows at the age of 15,” says the 32-year-old Shenoy. He admits that he got side-tracked into doing regular magic for a while. “But then I realised this was not what I wanted to do.” Unlike Harry Potter, who went to Hogwarts, Shenoy is self-taught. He is also planning a series of public shows, Beyond Magic, across the country to connect with a wider audience by just “gesturing hypnotically”.

Tweety bird: Nabeel Ziyaan

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Note: Article reproduced from India Today: The Road Not Taken.