A Long, Lucky Day

Two big events yesterday; a radio show in the morning, and then an interview for one of India’s biggest newspapers in the afternoon. Fever 104 FM is a young, modern station owned by Virgin on a floor high up in the huge Hindustan Times building in New Delhi. The guy who works in the elevator, taking it up and down all day, took me up to the studios. The show went incredibly well – did a few mind reading things with the DJ, working out words he was thinking of. His reaction – ‘we’ll have to bleep this out…F**K!’. They challenged me to try it with a caller. I showed the DJ that I’d influence her think of the number 69, and after a quick chat with her I asked her to name two numbers – ‘six’, then ‘nine’. They couldn’t believe it. She said later that she’d also had the image of blue boxer shorts in her head for some reason. I gave the DJ a peek of mine. It was my lucky day – blue.

In my closing routine, I got people to blindfold me up, with coins taped over my eyelids and a borrowed scarf to wrap around it all, and I was to work out and describe in as much detail as possible what objects people in the room were holding in their hands. I even had someone get out a bank note and I called off its’ serial number. This played so great and I was in darkness for quite a while. The boss came in and asked me to name the make of his watch – ‘TAG heur’. When I was unbandaged, the studio and mixing room outside was full of people all wanting to get a look at what was going on.

I was well taken care of. The boss pulled me into his office afterwards, got me lots of food and chai, and we talked for a long while about what I do. He made phone calls, and grilled me about the possibility of taking to the sweepstakes and even sitting me down opposite his main rival to see what I could get out of him. I told him it wasn’t quite like that. On the subject of spoon bending, he got excited and rallied the whole office together for an impromptu show with some of the canteen’s silverware. People kept coming to me and giving such amazing compliments, compliments I’m too modest to list, but too proud to not mention. One woman asked if I meditated, if that was where I got my ‘powers’ from. I told her it wasn’t quite like that either. All in all, it was an amazing morning, with the paper interview still to go.

The Hidustan Times is an Indian institution. With a readership of 6.6 million, it is the second most-widely read English newspaper in India. The reporter who met me got me straight up in front of his colleagues to perform. I was pretty exhausted from the morning, but gave it a good shot. More mind reading and metal bending, we had the interview and they took some photos. A long and tiring day, but a really memorable one with lots of footage, and hopefully a good article in one of India’s most popular papers.

India will have one single video that captures my time here, some scenic footage, some performance. It’s already in the making and will be awesome. Two weeks left today.