This afternoon I went to the Bangalore Club to park (which I normally do when I have work in the centre of town; I park there, walk around, do my work, and come back.) and realized that a “mix of hypnotism and comedy” was being advertised by Gavin Hooper of Canada this evening…that totally intrigued me, and I went to the Club again in the evening, and persuaded KM to come from Hosur, too. When I went there, preparations were on for a DJ night…oh, I thought, I seem to have let both of us in for some tacky opening show, I thought.

But it turned out to be really incredible…

The guy chose a lot of volunteers (including me) and said that he would have to ask those of us who were not suggestible, to go back, as he didn’t have time to overcome our resistance to it. Sure enough, I was the second person to be sent back! About ten people were sent back and the rest (about twenty) continued, though a few more did leave later.

I was still very skeptical, especially as he laced his hypnotism with a lot of humour (“let your hands rest on the lap, as you sit alternating one lady with one gentleman. Hands to rest on your own lap, sir.”) I thought the suggestible people were not sleeping but merely closing their eyes as I had done, and were just following his instructions.

But then he told one man as he touched him that when he woke him up, and he (the hypnotist) coughed, he would get unpleasant messages from the carton of cigarettes in his shirt pocket. And sure enough, as Gavin went around the others, he coughed occasionally, and a look of surprise would come on the other guy’s face; he would look down at his shirt pocket, realize that we were all watching, and stop. Then he finally did take out his cig pack and look at it and put it back. At this point, Gavin again put him to sleep and said that when he woke up, Gavin’s cough would make him hear sexy messages from the cigarettes. And oh, the discomfort on the man’s face when Gavin coughed! Finally, trying to be unobtrusive, the guy took out his cigarette packet, dropped it near his foot, and ground it under his heel!

Another guy, unfortunately got so much into the “you are in a space rocket and you are blasting off in your chair, tie your seat belts” scenario that he started yelling that they would crash! Gavin calmed him down for several minutes…and sent him off too.

One guy was told, towards the end, that when he was woken up he would walk back towards the chairs, but would not be able to step off the dance floor/cemented area. And indeed the poor guy would walk to the edge and just stop…

Another one was told that when he was going off, as he crossed the first sitting person off the cemented area, he would think he had lost his purse and would worry about it. The guy nodded, and when Gavin woke him up, got up, shook hands with the hypnotist, and walked back to his friends…only to suddenly stop and go back and ask, as quietly as he could, “do you have my wallet?”

The finale was Gavin’s telling one guy (apparently the most suggestible there) that he had an ambition to be steel and never bend. He made the guy stand ramrod straight while two volunteers lifted his head and shoulders on to one chair, and his calves and feet on to another…and the rigid torso and thighs lay horizontally, unsupported, in mid-air! The volunteers couldn’t get his torso to bend at all…and then as the hypnotist woke him up, the body sagged between the chairs and Gavin caught it and let it down to the ground slowly. And there was no way that guy was fit enough to do that “yoga” posture…

The hypnotist said that we still very imperfectly understand the power of the human mind and that just a fraction of a person’s brain got used…

Such a mouth-hanging-open evening…Gavin Hooper is really amazing! I have seen such hypnotists on cable TV, butalways with scepticism, and if I hadn’nt seen this with my own eyes, I would not have believed it! We all cheered the hypnotist to the echo…