9th book LE PENSEUR

Here is the story which appeared in The Pioneer,
New Delhi 0n 07th August 2007

Beggar with a flute felicitated in Hyderabad
Omer Farooq Hyderabad

A blind flute artist, who sat on a street corner and enchanted the passersby with his soulful music for thirty long years, was felicitated by artists, writers, poets as well as ordinary residents of a locality in Hyderabad.

The occasion was the release of a book on flutist Lingaiah by Telugu writer Kandukuri Ramesh Babu, as after spending most of his life on a footpath in a lane of Nallakunta area in Hyderabad and living on whatever was given to him by the passersby, the 50-year-old man has now decided to go back to his native village in Mahbubnagar district.

As oblivious to all the humdrum around him, sitting hunched in a corner, Lingaiah continued to sing one touching song after another. Hundreds of people, men, women and children, gathered to hear him, curious passers by stopped to see what was happening as a local corporator garlanded the old man amid applause. People made contribution to collect money for him as a parting gift while some others brought food and new clothes.

It was indeed a rare scene that people, including some renowned artists in their own right deciding to celebrate a man, essentially a beggar as an "artist".
"What attracted me towards him and caught my attention was his sitting posture which reminded me of Le Penseur-The Thinker, said Ramesh Babu, who has also titled his 36-page book "Le Penseur".

Le Penseur, as Ramesh Babu explains, is a bronze and marble sculpture by Auguste Rodi, which is kept in a museum in Paris depicting a man's internal struggle. "Whenever Lingaiah Tata was not playing his flute, he would sit silently resting one of his cheek in his hand in deep thinking or hold his head in his hands. I found him strikingly similar to that statue. To me he was a thinker in deep meditation".

The book, apart from capturing Lingaiah's life story and the conversation the author had with him, also has a collection of his photographs. Ramesh Babu is known for his series of books on most ordinary men with extraordinary traits in their personality. But he was not the only artist to be moved and inspired by Lingaiah's flute over the years. Siddharth, a poet, has written a series of poems on him and another writer was inspired to weave a short story around him.
Chandrasekhar, a senior Government employee residing in the same area, said that since early 70s he has been seeing Lingaiah at the same place whether it was scorching summer heat and freezing cold nights. "It is wrong to call him a blind man. He sees the world from his inner eye and conveys his feelings through his flute. He has moved and inspired almost every body who passes through this lane", he said.