Date:19/01/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/01/19/stories/2006011915950200.htm

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Karnataka - Bangalore

A real role model for the youth

Special Correspondent

A globetrotting musician down with diseases, he prayed for a healing miracle

He has visited 50 countries in 12 months

Between 1998 and 2005, he travelled to 93 countries

CHAMPION: Benny Prasad with his Limca certificate. — Photo: K. Gopinathan

Bangalore: Call him a globetrotting musician or just someone bitten by the travel bug who also happens to be a guitarist. This 30-year-old has visited 50 countries in 12 months (in 2004), and 93 countries between 1998 and 2005.

Benny Prasad is a role model for the young in many ways. Not just because his travels have been certified in the Limca Book of Records; he had to cope with health complications, cultural and climatic differences, and food habits, to have travelled and performed in so many countries.

He was born with asthma, and at an early age put on cortisone-based medication that resulted in various side effects affecting his health badly. "When I was 16, I even attempted suicide because I felt was useless,'' he recalls. At 19, doctors found that Benny had rheumatoid arthritis, something that catches people much later in life. They told him he may never be able to play the guitar again and that 90 per cent of his lungs were damaged. Feeling hopeless and lost, he turned to a higher power and prayed for a healing miracle, he says. Over the next few years, he did overcome various ailments and could play his beloved guitar again. His musical journeys have since then taken him from Swaziland to Switzerland.