The Reverse Magic of Lilin
By Dhrubo Neel
The laughter begins as soon as the magician Lilin suddenly landed on the stage from no-where. The reason behind the nagging is clear; the fifty year old magician is only about three feet tall.
Usually nobody laughs at Lilin at his own village Hatuntun. Because everyone in Hatuntun is dwarf and they are also around three feet tall. Only the city-people, who are tall enough, laughs at him. Some looks at him obliquely and some throws stones just to irritate him. These do not bother Lilin at all. Because, he knows powerful spells. If he wants, he can make the mocker into a catfish within a twinkling of an eye. That is why he always tried to keep calm. But sometimes it gets worse when his magic goes wrong. That’s what happened today.
First, Lilin pulled out a pigeon from his loose sleeve of the cloak. This infuriates him immediately. Because, a simple soft broom has to be there instead of the pigeon, then Lilin has to utter the spell and make the broom into a pigeon. But the pigeon came out first! Now what to do? Lilin started thinking and decided to make the pigeon into a soft broom.
The audience realized what just happened and they started laughing dreadfully. Lilin’s anger rises as the sound of the laughter increases. As the anger goes high, Lilin started making more mistakes. He brings two twin dwarfs out of a box. The dwarfs look surprised and one of the dwarfs whispered embarrassingly to Lilin, ‘Sir! You bring us earlier! Now, how can you show the big-jump magic?’
What is that big-jump magic? Let us have a little explanation. Two boxes will be put at a distance of 20 feet. One dwarf will come to the stage and he will jump right into one box. The other dwarf then will appear in no time from the other box kept 20 feet away. People will thought the dwarf somehow jump 20 feet while he was vanished. But, now everyone caught red handedly the secret of the big-jump magic. Audiences are waiting to see what magician Lilin will do now with two twin dwarf on the stage. A little storm went off on the Lilin’s brain and he decided to show a magic anyway. He command twin dwarfs to enter into one box, then uttered some boo boo spell. One of the dwarfs suddenly vanished and one come out from the box.
‘So, you hide another dwarf in the box? That’s your silly magic? Shame on you! We never watch such cheap magic in our life!’
Obviously Lilin’s head is on fire as the audience started throwing harsh words towards him. Lilin does not understand, he already vanished one of the dwarfs, but that does not seem satisfactory to the audience, ‘what is wrong with you guys!’ Lilin shouted furiously, but nobody listened. Then Lilin make some more mistakes in his magic. He pulled out a hat from the rabbit’s mouth instead of pulling a rabbit from the hat. The rabbit did not take it easily and left the stage impatiently. Then, Lilin has to disappear a baby duck by putting it into a big box. But you already can guess what happened. The box vanished! The baby duck started ‘quack! quack!’ standing in the hand of Lilin. Everybody laugh out loud again. Some of the audiences can’t stop but rolling on the ground by laughing. But, as usual, nobody seems to be worried about the disappearance of the big box! Suddenly, there is a clang sound and some coins appeared from nowhere. The opposite happened again. Lilin does not have to make coins from the empty space. The coins themselves appeared. One of the audiences point finger at Lilin said, “What a fool magician you are! You do not even know how to bring coins from empty space, the coins appeared themselves! shame! shame!.”
“Stop! Things are not going as you expected! But there are different sort of magic! Aren’t there?” Lilin shouted.
“We did not buy ticket to see those stupid ‘different magic’. If you can, show us some genuine magic. But what can be done by a dwarf like you!” One of the audience replied without hesitation.
That’s really infuriated Lilin and he decided to pass the time rapidly by a spell. So that he could go to his village Hatuntun as quick as can and get rid of those unsympathetic audiences. Lilin does not want to waste any time and utters the spell swiftly. Alas! The opposite happened again! Time does not pass quickly as anticipated, it reverses! The time reversed and stopped to that point, where Lilin just entered into the stage to show magic. Lilin again bring a pigeon from his cloak, just like before. Then he pulled a hat from the mouth of a rabbit. Then he brings out two twin dwarf and finally… finally he becomes angry and reversed the time mistakenly again. These events are happening again and again. After almost a hundred times, most of the audiences remain enraged, but some of the audiences whispered, “We may have seen those magic somewhere sometime. May be this is the famous reverse magic.”
The word ‘famous’ did not slip from Lilin’s ear. He feels glad to hear that. And, finally as because he is happy he did not make mistake at the last ‘time passing spell’ and disappeared quickly and happily. That’s how the reveres magic of Lilin ended.