David Copperfield has made the Statue of Liberty disappear, has walked through the Great Wall of China and made a part of the Orient Express vanish, but calls himself an “illusionist”. David Blaine is an “illusionist” and “a stunt performer” who spins in shackles in a gyroscope for two days — is that magic? And the most famous magician in the world is a high-school bespectacled boy “wizard” called Harry Potter.

The name — and face — of magic is changing. In Calcutta too. The mantle of the Sorcars has passed on to a woman. At Star Theatre Maneka Sorcar has donned the magician’s cloak and is sawing through people stuffed inside embellished chests, when not running across the stage to ensure that the family heirloom, the legendary “Water of India”, flows from the urn uninterrupted.

As she does so, speaking almost like her father, with every statement ending in sweeping hand gestures and culminating in a little laugh, performing some of her father’s and grandfather’s tricks with some of her father’s artistes, she reminds the audience of her father, but with her wild hair flying and her sequinned pants and tops, she is also a strange, new phenomenon.

Maneka, P.C. Sorcar Jr.’s 27-year-old daughter, who has “an MBA degree from Ohio University”, is caught somewhere in between. She calls her magic “Mayavigyan”, though describes herself as an “Aindrijaalik”. Indrajaal is the brand of magic that made the P.C. Sorcars the best-known Indian magicians. She is aware that she is the custodian of the Sorcar legacy, but insists that the Sorcar surname is not “an entry pass”. “I am a magician by choice,” she says.

“I lived magic,” she says. As a child, she would try to finish her homework in the greenroom at Mahajati Sadan, where her father performed, while her mother, Jayashree, who would perform alongside her husband, would make frequent trips there for costume change. “But while doing that, she would also correct the sums I was doing,” says Maneka. She knew she was a part of this grand, theatrical world. But adds she had to earn her right to enter it.

“In my teens, I told my father I wanted to be a magician. He said I would have to battle it out.” Magic is a difficult discipline to master. The art of illusions is based on the intricacies of science and technology. Besides, being a “meye”, a girl, may have been a problem.

Maneka says it is no longer a problem — her shows are bringing in full houses. But she adds she could not have done this without the lineage of “women magicians” in her family, rendered invisible by a rather prosaic, un-magical world.

“My mother performed with my father, but she was always referred to as an ‘assistant’.” Her grandmother, Maneka says, was the force behind PC Sorcar Sr., working tirelessly backstage, but she could never appear on the stage for fear of what “people would say”. Yet it was her grandfather who brought “respectability” to magic as a profession.

The changed times show in her performance. She appears to be a little less magical than her father, or grandfather. The Water of India flows, but does not quite achieve the satisfying musical denouement of national integration that her grandfather and father brought about with a simple trick and representatives from every province.

There is only a handful of tricks that she performs, mostly of the body-slicing variety. What about the delicious sleights-of-hand that could make a child dream on weeks? It’s not easy to make a child dream so easily, now.

There was sudden glee among the young members of the audience when Maneka promised to pass through the sharp blades of a fan moving at high speed. But as her horizontal figure emerged through the fan, it was clear that the blades had stopped moving while she was gliding through them. The children were amused. Though when she emerged at the back of the auditorium, after having been sawed, or bombed perhaps, there were loud claps.

But surpise, surprise: the interval was followed not by magic, but a documentary film on PC Sorcar Sr., put together by her, which makes an impassioned cry to acknowledge the great magician as a great Indian. A sceptical young member of the audience, who was trying to figure out every trick, fell asleep in his chair.

In the age of SFX and Cartoon Network, children are not very easy targets — that’s perhaps why the attempt to draw adults in. Magic has changed.