Word: fakir
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...Plexi-Ball is a sparkling basketball-sized plastic sphere that rolls kittenishly away every time the viewer claps his hands together. Ingeniously combining a blower and a vibrator, Engineer Niels O. Young flings an 80-ft.-long loop of tape soaring out into graceful swirls in his mechanized Fakir in 3/4 Time...
Some candidates hired drummers to precede them and attract crowds; others leased elephants or rode about on camels. The fakir who last year tried to walk on water and sank is running for Parliament "by order of God." India...
India's greatest fakir, Laxman Sandra Rao, 77, demonstrated his powers first by taking a walk on hot coals. Then came time for the stunt that the crowd of 1,000 had paid up to $100 apiece to witness: a stroll across the water in a specially constructed tank in Bombay. While movie cameras whirred, Rao stepped off the edge-and sank like a stone to the bottom. The spectators felt they'd been soaked themselves. Rao retreated to a downtown office building, where he began returning rupees to all the rubes who came forward...
...Flute in D Major. A large man with a suave stage presence, Rampal cannot make the flute sing as Baker can, but he does make it speak with a wonderfully expressive French accent. He is the master showman of his instrument, and he charms an audience as a fakir charms a snake...
...tourist in India, the magician's rope trick is merely another clever demonstration that the hand is quicker than the eye. To Professor Mircea Eliade of the University of Chicago divinity school, the fakir's fakery is the vestige of an ancient religious rite with highly symbolic overtones: the rope is an image of the "astral cord," symbolizing the link between earth and sky, man and heaven. Originally, the trick was intended to prove to spectators the existence of an unknown and mysterious world; by climbing the rope and then temporarily disappearing, the conjurer revealed the possibility...