Koppal man celebrates house-warming ceremony with wax statue of late wife (FOR PRINT)

Shrinivas Gupta, a well-known entrepreneur in Koppal, on Monday grabbed public attention not only for organising an extravagant house-warming ceremony at his newly-built luxury villa but also for installing a wax statue of his deceased wife to symbolically recreate her presence.

After his wife died in a road accident in July, 2017, Mr. Gupta went ahead with his plan of constructing a luxury house, designed to match his wife’s taste. To make up for the absence of his wife during the grahapravesha ceremony, Mr. Gupta planned to get a statue of his wife created for the occasion so that he, along with his children, could recreate the feeling of being with his wife during the ceremony.

Mr. Gupta, an international hair trader, searched extensively on the Internet, used all his contacts and made visits to several places to find someone who could give shape to his idea and finally found one in Bengaluru. The sculptor created the statue using rubber, silicon, wax and other materials, and the output was satisfactory for his customer.

As planned, the statue in pink saree was placed on a sofa in the newly built house and Mr. Gupta affectionately sat beside it for a while. His two daughters stood on either side of the couple to make it a perfect family image.

While the statue turned heads at the house-warming ceremony, Mr. Gupta’s love for his wife received special admiration and photo has gone viral.

“If I had the power to infuse life into the statue, I wouldn’t have wasted a single moment,” he said.