The Sorcerer's Apprentice (Paperback)

From this point on, Shah encounters scams and cons to put any American grifter to shame, and a busload of outlandish characters. Predictably, after confidently announcing that one has to beware on the infamous Farakka Express train, he gets slipped a mickey and is robbed of everything. In Calcutta he finds Hakim Feroze and finds him to be a fully Westernized and sartorially splendid person. After agreeing to follow Feroze's regime to the letter, he discovers the despotic nature of the man, who seems to suffer from an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Soon, Shah is regurgitating on command, reading ten books a day on illusion, and performing minor feats of legerdemain. While in Calcutta, Shah talks to the country's foremost hangman and learns a few tips, visits a shanty restaurant that serves food prepared solely from garbage, In one of the best chapters, he spends an evening with bodysnatchers. While in the West many have the vague impression that Indians are all cremated and scattered in the Ganges, Shah takes us to a field outside the city where corpses are dumped by those unable to afford proper rites. There, he encounters a small industry engaged in stripping the flesh off bodies, cleaning the skeletons, and exporting them to medical schools overseas. Another fine Calcutta sequence is his detailing of the ghamelawalla industry. Ghamelawallas pay for the privilege of sweeping out goldsmith's shops. They then wash and treat the dirt with chemicals to extract gold. Then they sell the remaining dirt to a poorer bunch who do the same thing. Then they sell the dirt to people who pan for any remaining dust, and then they sell the remaining dirt to brick-makers... And of course there are the guys who rent babies to women beggars, and the women who rent cows and charge people to feed them...

At the midpoint of the book, after passing his initial tests, Shah is sent to wander India on a "journey of observation," during which he will mail weekly reports to Feroze. He is soon joined by a 12-year-old con artist he accurately describes as a "walking crime wave," who becomes his fixer and translator in the madcap journey to follow. The duo bounce from city to city to witness various miracle workers, healers-and other tricksters why prey on superstitions-ply their trade all over the country, ending in Bombay. Shah is quick to reveal the props, trickery, and chemistry behind all he observes. He relates the journey not in the breathless or overwrought style common to many travelogues, but with an amused and skeptical wonder. There's a great chapter in which he and the boy adjudicate in the trial of witch in a small town. Another one is when he meets the world's ostensibly richest man. He discovered three gemstones larger than any known to man, so large no person has the wealth to buy them. So he remains relatively poor, with his sole consolation being his gems' entries in the Guinness Book of Records. Then there is the "duel of miracles" between to magicians... Shah's journey amongst India's practitioners of illusion is great stuff, warmly and engagingly told, and sure to delight.