The Street Musicians of New Delhi

“I sat on the roof of Ishamudin’s house across from an eighty-two-year-old man who was about to breathe fire. He opened his mouth to show that it was empty. Then he closed his eyes and exhaled smoke through his nose and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. The smoke hung lazily in the unmoving air and joined the smells of shit, filth, and garbage that rose from the ground and the open sewers and clung to the slum like flies on rotting food. 

Another wisp of smoke rose involuntarily from his nostrils. He winced. The old man seemed more like a prophet than a magician and appeared frail in his white coat and turban, until our eyes met. Then he did not look frail. He stared at me as if to say, “You want to see magic? This is magic.” He raised his head back and up and inhaled a great quantity of air. For a moment, everything in the world stopped moving. Then the magician exhaled and there was fire everywhere. It didn’t look like a conjuror’s trick or a sideshow stunt from the circus. It looked like magic.”

From “Here is Real Magic: A Magicians’s Search for Wonder in the Modern World” by Nate Staniforth 

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