Titus Varghese is a busy man. People who know him closely would say that he has been very busy for the past 25 years. Strangely, Titus finds it hard to answer a very simple question — what does he do for a living. If one checks his CV, they would have a hard time counting the jobs in his work experience tab. Titus, a native of Kollam, says that after college, he has done numerous jobs starting from sales executive in a car company to location manager in the film industry. However, most people know him as a magician and as a journalist, whose life is more dramatic than any movie.
Titus started off his career as a sales executive, but he struggled to cope with the norms at the company and resigned very soon. The next job was as a helper in an aluminium shop. “I have no idea why I did that job,” says Titus. However, in 1992, lady luck favoured him and he won a lottery of Rs 5,000, which was a big prize money at that time. “With that money, I opened a computer centre along with some friends. I also set up a pet shop,” he says.
But both the business ventures did not go well. Titus had to think about other ways of livelihood and he zeroed in on his childhood ambition — to be a professional magician. The early 90’s was a good time for experiments and with the help of books, he learned some tricks which were pretty new those days. “I performed illusion tricks and escape tricks. I was one of the youngest professional magicians in Kerala at that time.”
As he had a degree in journalism and loved to write, he got posted in a newspaper as a reporter, only to quit the job over some petty issues. He still conducted magic shows. “It was a tough time and I even thought of ending my life. I decided to sell my books as a last resort. I sold the books for a good price to Gopinath Muthukad, which was a real life line. It gave me the courage to fight back,” says Titus. Later, he came back to journalism and worked for two different newspapers.
It was then that he started a peculiar hobby of collecting newspaper cuttings related to airplanes. “It was a unique hobby, I knew. It’s been almost 13 years. The hobby actually helped me in developing some scripts and I have completed one based on flights and trains.” Titus has worked as an associate director in ad films and is hopeful of fulfilling his dream of scripting a feature film soon. He does jobs like location manager, production manager, PRO, subtitle writer, and even helps in the art section. “All these years, I have been humble and compassionate to everyone. I have already completed a few scripts and talks are in progress with producers over two scripts. I am extremely hopeful that things will work out.”
