Kannada novelist Triveni’s home in Mysuru to house a museum

Mysuru: One of the attractions for book lovers in Mysuru city is writer RK Narayan’s renovated house in Yadavagiri, which is now converted into a museum.
Soon, the book lovers will have another house to visit when they land in the city. Inspired by Shakespeare’s residence in London, the Triveni Shankar Sahitya Pratisthan now decided to convert well-known Kannada novelist Triveni’s 120 year-old-house ‘Belli Moda’ in Chamarajapuram area of the city into a museum and marking several spaces for various activities.
Speaking to reporters, Triveni’s daughter Meera Kumar informed that a fan of Triveni is bearing the restoration and renovation cost of the house. “He wants to be anonymous,” she said.
In 2006, Meera Kumar visited Shakespeare’s residence in London and was inspired by it. “When I visited Shakespeare’s house, the first thing that came to my mind was converting my mother’s house into such a memorial,” she said.
“We will restore the house as it is. There will not be many changes except a few additions like a place to write for writers, discussions with writers, etc.”
“My mother was born in this house. Later she became the daughter-in-law of the house. It was a love marriage. From her cradle to the makeup box, handwriting, original scripts, and saree, all her belongings were kept safe by my father. All these will be exhibited here. Initially, our idea was to allow the visitors for free. But now, we are thinking about fixing the nominal rate as the entry fee for maintenance,” she said.
“My father had kept around 600 to 700 condolence letters received after Triveni’s death safely. It is easy to sell this house. But money has no value. I wanted to convert this house into a memorial for her,” Meera said. “We wanted to keep this memorial busy with numerous activities. As my mother wrote a lot about the importance of mental health, a counseling center for students, and senior citizens will also be set up. My daughter who is a psychologist in the USA advised me about this. The centre will be opened with counsellor Parvathi Vattam . Book release, book discussions, and other literature-related activities will be carried out here. So, we are planning to allocate many spaces,” she stated.
“Earlier the archaeology department officials had come forward to give technical guidance on restoring this house. As we have a donor, we didn’t approach the Karnataka government departments,” she said.
She also informed me that e-books of Triveni’s writings will be released in January, while an audio book is expected by March.