33 Statues on TankBund

The 33 statues lining Tank Bund have been there since time immemorial. Installed almost two decades ago by the N T Rama Rao government, these statues of the greatest and best talent of Andhra Pradesh, span centuries of brilliant lives. Some of the best poets in Telugu literature, the most prolific writers and the most able administrators aiding the most magnanimous kings… these are profiles of excellence set forever in the form of these inanimate statues. However, the tragic part of the story is that not many of us know about the likes of Nannaya Bhattu and Tikkanna Somayaji. To gather information on their lives was no mean task. In spite of concerted efforts to extract official records on the statues, we failed in doing so. Hence, the information you see here is a compilation from a variety of sources. As a part of Prism’s 12th anniversary, here are 33 lives; immortalized by sculpture, but jaded from our memories.

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