“That is why we have what we call an ‘out’,” Shenoy explained. The word covers the many ways in which magicians distract attention from their mistakes and rehabilitate an act when it goes off the rails. Modi’s “out” came just 24 hours later. It doesn’t figure in the Iconic Speeches category on his website but it is, to my mind, one of the most compelling examples of political theatre.

For the first 23 minutes of his November 13 speech to a full house in Goa, Modi strummed one singular note: parochial pride. He praised Goa as by far the best of the smaller states in the Union; enumerated the many schemes that had made Goa a paradise; spoke in wondrous terms of the many schemes being launched that would trigger a gold-rush resulting in tourists outnumbering locals two to one; and even congratulated Goa on gifting to the nation the strongest defence minister India ever had. If his laudatory portrait of the “visionary” Manohar Parikkar bore little resemblance to the motormouth who talked about gouging the enemy’s eyes out and who boasted that terrorists couldn’t enter the country without his permission, the crowd by then was too thoroughly marinated in a sense of its self-worth to say nay.

22 minutes into his speech, Modi signalled a change of subject, and of tone. He paused. He sipped water. He coughed. He let the silence build. Then he succumbed to another coughing fit. The suspense built. The audience held its collective breath. The dignitaries on stage whispered their concern to each other. “On the 8th,” Modi began. And he paused, with a knowing smile and nod. The audience tittered in relief – Modi was well, and he was going to talk to them of serious things.

It was magic.

Teller, the genius half of the legendary duo of Penn and Teller, in an article for Smithsonian magazine (and a lecture-demonstration for the Mind Science Foundation) revealed the seven psychological elements of a successful magic trick.

“It is hard to think critically if you are laughing”

Modi began act two of his passion play with a feather-light tickle of the audience’s funny-bone. Across the country, he said, crores of people are sleeping peacefully in their beds. But the corrupt, numbering a few thousands, cannot sleep; they try to buy sleeping pills but they can’t get any because, no money.

The illusion he conjured up had the audience in splits. And an audience that is laughing is an audience that is not thinking – thus, it never wondered for a moment why those imagined insomniacs couldn’t get their fix, given that the demonetized currency remained legal tender in pharmacies.

“It is not misdirection,” Nakul Shenoy once explained. “It is actually direction – the illusionist deliberately directs your attention to what he wants you to see, not away from what he does not want you to see.

That was the essence of Modi’s skill here: with one line, he directed the collective attention away from the frustrating hours they had spent in line and from the stories of Punjab’s Sukhdev Singh and other demonetisation-induced deaths that had begun to trickle in, and had them laughing at the illusion of corrupt plutocrats tossing and turning in a fever-fit of despair. He fooled them because they wanted to be fooled into believing that their own hardships had somehow been worth it.

“Nothing fools you better than the lie you tell yourself”

With supreme skill, Modi then set out to make the audience complicit in demonetisation (a favourite trick, which most recently has him sharing the ‘credit’ for the disastrous GST rollout with the Congress). He planted in their minds the thought that whatever he had done was with their mandate, and at their bidding, and in defiance of the wishes of entrenched vested interests. His voice broke, his speech faltered as he spoke of his disinterest in power; his voice gained in timbre and brio as he spoke of the gigantic battle he had launched.

And through stunning sleight of mouth, he inversed the reality of November 8. Demonetisation was not a hasty, ill-considered move foisted on a country without sufficient planning and preparation but rather the realisation of the collective will of the people; he, Modi the Modest who had never aspired to high office, was merely their chosen instrument.

“Exploit pattern recognition”

Watch Teller repeatedly produce coins out of thin air. In magic, repetition creates patterns. Patterns prompt recognition, which in turn creates a knowing anticipation – you begin to see what is coming next, and this fills you with a sense of your own cleverness. Without conscious volition, you buy into the lie being sold – Teller’s coins out of thin air, Modi’s villains out of straw.

Building up a nice rhythm, Modi created repetitive patterns that played into his narrative of the virtuous poor against the evil rich. He conjured up villains: the ultra-rich with their foreign bank accounts; the rapacious real-estate agents who colluded with the corrupt in benami land deals; the jewelry establishments that aided and abetted those who sought to convert their black money into gold and diamonds...

The pattern repeated. New villains were introduced; Modi – the chosen champion – joined battle against these forces of evil and vanquished them; he spoke of even bigger battles to come, and allowed the audience to anticipate the victories that would follow.

“If you are given a choice, you believe you have acted freely”

Aapne mujhe kaha hai ki nahin?

(Have you not told me?)

Modi repeatedly used the evangelical call-and-response format to create the illusion that the audience, and by extension the country, had voluntarily engaged in this titanic struggle knowing full well that it was fraught with short-term pain. It was their choice, not his whim; it was their mandate, not his will; it was their fight, not his folly.

Arms flailing, palm slapping against his 56-inch chest, voice climbing effortlessly through the octaves, Modi launched into an extended fire-and-brimstone peroration.

“Mujhe Goa-wasiyon ke aashirwad chahiye. Aap khade ho karke mujhe aashirwad dijiye! Desh dekhehga. Desh dekhega ki iss desh mein imandaar logon ki kami nahin hai. Aayiye, aayiye, imandaari ke iss kaam mein mera saath dijiye… sabaash, mere Goa ke pyaare bhaiyon aur behenon, main aapko sar jukhake naman karta hoon… yeh sirf Goa nahin, yeh Hindustan ke har imandaar ki awaaz hai…” ("“ want the blessings of Goans. Stand up and bless me! The country will see. It will see that there is no dearth of honest people in this country. Come, come, join me in this act of honesty... Bravo, my dear Goan brothers and sisters, I bow before you and pray... this isn't just Goa's but every honest Indian's voice.”) “Bhaiyon behenon, main jaanta hoon maine kaise kaise thakaton se ladayi mod li hain... main jaanta hoon kaise kaise log mere khilaf ho jayenge, main jaanta hoon… sattar saal ka unka main loot raha hoon, mujhe zinda nahin chodenge, mujhe barbaad karke rahenge… unko jo karna hai karein…” (“Brothers and sisters, I know what kind of forces I have taken on... I know what kind of people are against me... I know... I'm taking away 70 years of their wealth, they won't leave me alive, they will destroy me... let them do what they may...”)

What Teller demonstrated with a card trick, Modi practised with simple sleight of mouth. Oof.

The novice magician makes objects vanish – a simple feat of manual dexterity. The adept transforms the vanished object into something else altogether – the ball into an orange; the scantily clad assistant into a tiger. Modi the political prestidigitator used this speech to pull of a similar vanish-and-transform.