The Incredible Mentalist, Nicolai Friedrich

I didn't believe in magic until we attended a show by one of the world's best mentalists, Nicolai Friedrich, at the Symbiosis Auditorium in Pune this Friday. I remember going to PC Sorkar's magic shows as a child, and it involved sawing girls into pieces, rabbits out of a hat, and abracadabra...

But this was something unbelievable!

Nicolai has an amazing stage presence, looks like a movie star, and an awesome sense of humor. His tricks don't come through his sleeves, which stay rolled up. He will mesmerize you with his "mind reading". Asking the audience itself to nominate people from the audience at random, he did unbelievable mind reading tricks - too many to mention here, but almost impossible to fathom!

And some of his tricks - he tore up a Bombay Times, and then "rewound" time, and you could actually see scraps of paper rise back from the floor, into the tore up pages into his hands, to form the full paper again. Unbelievable. Life in rewind. I swear!

He drew a bowling ball on a piece of paper, then squeezed it - and a real bowling ball fell on the floor, disappearing from the paper he had drawn it on.

Yes, I am sure there are tricks and techniques. I am sure there is sleight of hand. But after Nicolai's show, I prefer to believe it was for real!