Razzle, dazzle: Young Indian magicians pull up new tricks to break cliche

Comparisons with the West may be odious, but the benchmarks for inventiveness have been set astoundingly high

For a kid, one of the perks of subscribing to Sportstar was that you never had to bother with buying posters. Every issue came with a new one, carefully sandwiched between two equal sections. I collected many over the years, but my two favourites — they adorned my bedroom walls well into adulthood — were Zinedine Zidane, prancing with the ball at Euro 2004, and a ponytailed Roger Federer, still slightly raw and only beginning to accumulate his improbable haul of 20 Grand Slam titles.

The only poster I ever bought was a peculiar one. It was American magician Criss