2657 Productions News

The P. James Magic Show.

From the first day I arrived in Chennai, there were a few things which stood out to me. I’ve already mentioned several of them—like the traffic and smells and pollution and so on—but I haven’t mentioned the P. James Magic Show.

All around Chennai—whether you are in Chetpet, Egmore, T. Nagar, Nungambakkam, on Marina Beach or somewhere else in the area—you are bound to see the crudely painted “calling cards” for the P. James Magic Show. They are all in various stages of freshness—for example, there is one right at the closest major intersection to our flat that has practically faded entirely away—so I venture to say that this is an ongoing project, and an old project, for the whoever is doing them. What’s particularly interesting about this citywide graffiti is that there is a phone-number included on every tag. How many taggers do you know put up their tag and then say, “Here’s my number if you want to call me!”

As I always find it a bit awkward to play the tourist and cary my camera around with me and take photos of touristy type things, Amy and I have decided that we would photograph Chennai through the eyes of the P. James Magic Show. We’ve already spent a good 20-30 minutes on one particular day walking around Egmore—a part of town close to our flat—and managed to get over 30 photos of these tags… and that is just a small part of the city….

Now that I’ve already started, I sort of regret the haphazard approach we are taking to photographing the P. James legacy. I’m almost tempted to start over and do a more systematic weekend-based approach where we focus on just one portion of the city at a time, so we can better track the dispersion of these tags around the city. I have a great detailed book-type map of Chennai that would be a great source for narrowing our exploration. It would also be a great way to force ourselves to go to other parts of the city that we would normally not visit—the parts of town with little shopping and so on… the parts of town that when we tell most people we went there they usually ask “Why did you go there?”

The thing makes this diligence a bit difficult, however, is that there are so many tags throughout the city, and when I see one that really stands out, I just can’t resist taking a photo of it right away. And this is without even looking. So, Amy and I may just have to settle with just an overall Chennai retrospective….

I’ve asked a couple of people about it—showing them some of my pictures—and they’ve all said, “Oh yes, you’ll find those all over Chennai.” “So, have you ever seen the magic show or do you know anyone who has?” “No.” Pretty intriguing….

At the end of it all, we also plan to try calling the number on the signs and maybe trying to meet whoever is behind this P. James explosion. For the moment, however, it is more fun to just pretend that his magic is that he can be everywhere at once while being nowhere at all.