Soon, Mother's Wax Museum to house Sister Nivedita's statue

Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation (HIDCO) will install a wax statue of Sister Nivedita in Mother's Wax Museum in New Town to celebrate her sesquicentennial birth anniversary.

The museum is the only of its kind in the country and was inaugurated by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on November 10, 2014. So far, the footfall of visitors is around four lakh.

HIDCO has placed an order with the artist who takes two to three months to make a full length wax statue. Margaret Elizabeth Noble, popularly known as Sister Nivedita was born in Dungeon in Ireland in October 1868. She came to Kolkata in 1898 and set up a school for girls on Bosepara Lane in North Kolkata. Her service during the plague that broke out in 1899 in vast areas surrounding Baghbazar was phenomenal.

There are wax statues of Sri Ramakrishna, Ma Sarada and Swami Vivekananda in the museum. The museum is the only-of-its-kind in Bengal and was inaugurated by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on November 10, 2014.

The wax museum has a unique collection of wax statues ranging from Jagadish Chandra Bose working in his laboratory to Tagore sitting on a chair and reading a book. There is a wax statue of Mahatma Gandhi too. There are wax statues of Satyajit Ray, Uttam Kumar, Suchitra Sen, Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeskar, Manna Dey among others. There are statues of Bollywood stars too like Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan and sports personalities like Kapil Dev, Sourav Ganguly, Virat Kohli, Maradona and others.

Mamata Banerjee threw open the second wing of the Wax Museum on November 11, 2016. A new Hollywood section has been introduced where there are wax statues of great start of recent past. There is a replica of the stage where the stars receive the Oscar award given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science. There is a children section where there are wax statues of Harry Potter and Mr Bean.

The museum has become immensely popular and has become an important tourist destination.