The blind folk singer behind Hanuman Ansh’s hit song is now having his eyes treated

Suneel Lodhi, the 25-year-old blind folk singer whose song “Maine Tere Hi Bharose” is in the film Hanuman Ansh, is being treated for his eyes with help from the film’s co-producer and the Madhya Pradesh government, the Hindustan Times reported on Tuesday.

The co-producer, Anupriya Nagar, told the paper she had booked appointments for him with doctors in Mumbai, and that the state government had then stepped in to help with the treatment. “It’s been a joint effort,” she said.

Earlier this month the chief minister, Mohan Yadav, met Suneel and his parents in Bhopal, gave him ₹1 lakh and promised to help restore his sight, according to a government statement reported by the Press Trust of India.

The village

Suneel was born blind and grew up in Agra, a village in the Bundelkhand region, where his family keeps a few animals on a small piece of land, ThePrint reported. The family could not afford for him to finish school.

For years people in the village treated him as a bad omen and would take another road if they saw him in the morning. “When I stepped out in the morning, people wouldn’t look at me. Many times, I heard them wince, ‘Whose face did we just see early in the morning?’” he told ThePrint.

He learned the region’s hymns from the groups of singers who travelled from village to village, and one of them, an older man, handed him his own tambura, a long-necked string instrument, after watching the boy keep time. “This belongs to you now,” the man told him, according to Suneel’s uncle, Rohit Sahu.

The rooftop

In 2019 Rohit started an Instagram page called Bundeli Duniya to show the folk music of Bundelkhand. When his sister told him about Suneel’s singing, he went to the village with his phone and a tripod and filmed him on the roof of the house.

For months the videos got views in single digits, and people in the village asked Rohit why he was wasting his time, fuel and money “chasing an unemployed blind boy”, he told ThePrint. A wedding song in 2023 reached about 900,000 views, and a Hanuman hymn posted about nine months ago, “O Mere Sankat Ke Kataiya Hanuman”, passed 33 million.

Suneel cannot read a script, so Rohit teaches him new songs a line at a time. “When a formal script is placed in front of me, my uncle becomes my sight,” Suneel said. “He sits across from me, breaking down each line syllable by syllable, repeating it twenty times.”

A clip that spread online this month claimed he used to sing on trains for money. He says he was practising. “I wasn’t begging; I was doing my riyaaz. Singing to my Lord is my worship, my work, and my self-respect,” he told ThePrint. “An artist doesn’t become a beggar just because he cannot see.”

Four lines

In February, on a trip to Mumbai to record songs for a studio, Rohit filmed Suneel singing on Versova beach and posted it, and the video reached Vishal Chaturvedi, who was making Hanuman Ansh, ThePrint reported.

“I sang four lines and the entire room went silent,” Suneel said. Chaturvedi told him it was “the voice of the film”, but Suneel expected his recording to be replaced by a famous playback singer before the film came out.

The recording stayed in Hanuman Ansh, which was cut to 40 screens in its first week and went on to earn more than ₹400 crore, according to the Indian Express.

Rohit told ThePrint that people in the village who once doubted Suneel now come to the door with garlands, waiting to touch his feet.