BANGALORE, JUNE 16: Sunday the 13th turned most magical with fifteen of our Ringers and magician guests getting together for our monthly meeting via Zoom and making the day wonderful with their spells and varied discussions. These included Shankar Junior from Udupi, Clifford Parakh from Goa, Kumaran Anandan from Chennai, Saurav Mohanty from Bhubaneshwar, Subramanian Cholayil from Mallapuram, Sandeep Koralla and Saravanan Abbaisundaram from the Middle East, Avinash Sridhar and Shameer Salim from USA, Narayanamurthy from Coimbatore, Master Inesh Shenoy, Master Ishaan Shenoy, Nakul Shenoy, Prahlad Saldanha, and Soumyabrata Banerjee from Bangalore.
The meeting was called to order by our Secretary, Nakul Shenoy, who welcomed the gathering and took the opportunity to introduce our latest members to Ring 177. In this past month, we had six new members joining the Ring and the IBM, viz. Master Inesh Shenoy, Master Ishaan Shenoy, Saravanan Abbaisundaram, Balasubramanian Chandran, Narayanamurthy K, and Magic Bala (Balanagendran G). With this latest addition, the Ring had attained a record 39 active members, and we hoped to cross the 40 mark soon, Nakul said. The new members were congratulated and welcomed by all.
Nakul added that The Bangalore Ring now had a new, “full-fledged” Members Area integrated into our website – ibmring177.com, and each member had their own login credentials to access the Ring archives and video recordings of all our virtual meetings and other activities since August 2020. In addition to this additional magic resources provided kindly by the members were also available to our members.
Elections for the posts of the office-bearers would be held next month and members were encouraged to sign up for the said elections, he added. After a brief discussion on the well-being of all the members and the current COVID situation across the country, the official part of the meeting drew to a close and it was time for the Tricks Session.
This was kicked off by Master Inesh Shenoy with a visual card act where one of four spot cards transformed into a King, individually till all the four spot cards were now Kings and what had earlier been Kings had transformed into the said spot cards. The iTwins, Inesh and Ishaan will be attending the Lance Burton Teen Seminar in July and so, Inesh followed his performance with another card act that he has submitted for consideration of the upcoming seminar. This act of elusive aces was as entertaining as it was perplexing.
Avinash Sridhar took the screen next and performed a long-distance prediction effect, where a merely thought of card happened to be the only card in his wallet that he had held in full view all the time. Illusionist Clifford showed the mystery of of Kings on Bicycles, and everybody was left pondering where they disappeared to. That the Kings were all now found together having a beer (that was the image on the card!) fitted in perfectly with Clifford performing this for all of us from Goa!
Just when we were still reeling from this, Shameer Salim divined a playing card merely thought of by Soumyabrata, by “reading his palm” all over zoom! He then followed it up by performing a “which hand” routine with every one of us in the call. This took everybody’s breath away. As always, Shameer was magnanimous in sharing the modus operandi of this wonderful effect, just one of the many possibilities, of a new magical app he is releasing soon. We all eagerly look forward to this release and hope we get Ring members discounts!
This presentation led to a nice discussion on multiple revelations, based on a related question on the same asked by Kumaran Anandan. A variety of ideas and applicable suggestions came firth that was to everybody’s benefit.
When the trick session continued, Nakul Shenoy performed his “I know what you had for breakfast” act, a zoom version of the classic ‘Roundelay’ effect by Max Maven. The earlier discussion on multiple revelation effects also prompted Nakul to perform and share his nuances of the centuries old ATLAS-BIBLE mind-reading with cards effect.
Prahlad Saldanha performed an impressive your card at your number effect, using multiple volunteers each to define the suit, the value and then the position of the card. He kindly shared the workings of the effect, and suggested how perhaps it could be used in conjunction with the new product being released by Shameer.
Kumaran Anandan came on next predicting the imaginary coin toss of a volunteer. He repeated this effect a couple of times, only to increase its impact in our minds. His clever use of projecting his mobile screen as he performed this effect, led to a few questions to the use of OBS and he was kind enough to share a few tips with the group.
Shankar Junior was joining us after a couple of months and was clearly the most awaited performer of the day. He did not let us down, blowing our minds with a clever effect with zener cards. That these were his beautiful, custom-designed zener cards only added to the effect.
Subramanian M performed a quick visual transformation of a playing card, and with this the trick session came to an end. Before we knew it two and half hours were up, and it was time to call the meeting to an end. And that is exactly what we did, wishing everybody well and good health. Our next monthly meeting coincides with the Annual Convention of the IBM, and will be held at 10AM IST on July 11th. We hope to see you there.
Stay safe, make magic.
The Bangalore Ring 