New Town: Calcutta's take on Madame Tussauds has become a meme mill on social media, thanks to celebrity statues whose attempts at likeness are nothing to wax lyrical about.
Of the 400-odd visitors to Mother's Wax Museum on Sunday was Akshay Vaidya from Mumbai. The software trainer, a Sachin Tendulkar fan like millions of others, would have taken a selfie with his idol's statue but for the sight that greeted him there.
The Tendulkar of New Town is a sculpted caricature of the original. The powerful arms that launched 264 international sixes have been replaced with puny hands. The famous curls have been usurped by a frizzy wig. The wax face, with crow's feet around the eyes, mocks the real Master Blaster's well-preserved youthfulness.
"With forearms like those, his sixes wouldn't have crossed the 30-yard circle," quipped a friend accompanying Akshay.
As the group moved on, more disappointments awaited them. There was Shah Rukh Khan with a bloated face and a bored expression, a frowning Kapil Dev hard to recognise without the benefit of imagination and some major international disasters like Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona.
The Maradona model, missing his famously stout legs, seemed to be crying out for some intervention by the Hand of God.
"Look, Messi's arms are like that of a schoolboy," said a young man, triggering a roar of laughter from his friends.
" Araisho taka diye ei (This is what we get for Rs 250)?" said another man of an entry fee that he thought did not provide value for money.
Mother's Wax Museum, located opposite Eco Park, receives between 500 and 1,000 visitors each day. Weekends are even busier, although the footfall apparently has more to do with curiosity than quality. Few seem to have a kind word after they leave.
"I am very disappointed with what I saw. When global standards are so high, I don't see why this disaster of a wax museum is being portrayed as a tourist attraction," said an elderly man who did not want to be named.
The museum authorities said the wax models had been crafted by artists with the help of available pictures for reference.
In contrast, each model that makes it to Madame Tussauds museums around the world takes around 350 hours to make. Artists meet the person whose wax likeness is being created to take measurements, a steel fame is built for the body and an elaborate process involving a plaster mould and hot wax produces the head. The eyeballs are handpainted. Facial and head hair are dyed and fixed, one strand at a time. The skin is created with 10 layers of paint to get the tone and make-up right. A plastic cast is made for the clay body, but the hands are of wax to make the model appear lifelike.
At Mother's Wax Museum, the quality of the sculptures has spawned jokes right from the start. Some of these have got a fresh lease of life after sculptures of Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen were removed last week "for improvements" on chief minister Mamata Banerjee's orders.
"They have got most of the faces wrong, especially on the sixth floor. Bangladeshi music video man Hero Alom looks better than the Shah Rukh Khan model here!" joked Amir Hossain, one of the many Bangladeshi visitors to the museum on Sunday.
The museum had been inaugurated by Mamata in 2014 with 19 models sculpted by local artists. Later models imported from the US and made of silicone appear closer to the real celebrities, including Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp.
"We have appointed a committee of noted artists shortlisted by the information and cultural affairs department to advise us on which figurines need improvement and how to go about it," Debashis Sen, chairman of West Bengal Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation, told Metro.
Additional reporting by Snehal Sengupta
