Museum of oddities heads to India

Museum of oddities heads to India
By Soutik Biswas
BBC News, Delhi
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6661365.stm


A Jivaro Indian shrunken head, 1920, from Ripley's collection
The Indian museum will feature shrunken head
The world's biggest freak show is about to hit India.


Shrunken human heads from South Africa. A freak animal with six legs and two heads. A skeleton of a mastodon, a prehistoric elephant-like animal. A rock from Mars, which was dislodged when a meteorite hit the planet.

All this and more quirky and bizarre items will be on display at the Ripley's Believe It Or Not! museum due to open by the end of this year in the southern Indian city of Bangalore.

The Canada-based Ripley's Entertainment Company runs some 64 attractions in 11 countries and has been in the business for 85 years.



India will be the 12th country to have Ripley's Believe it or Not! attractions.

They will be spread across three museums on a 50-acre entertainment and residential complex being set up by Bangalore-based Innovative Studios.

"The country was a natural market to come to one day," Ripley's president Robert Masterson told the BBC.

"India has been one of our strongest markets since the 1930s when the newspapers here began carrying our cartoon strip. We have a lot of fans here, and we get a lot of inquires from India."

The immensely popular Ripley's cartoon strip appears in 300 newspapers in 60 countries in 17 languages.

Craze

Mr Masterson says the Indian museum will have a "collection of genuine and original items from our collection from all over the world".

They include shrunken human heads collected from the jungles of South Africa ("they sell for anything between $50,000 to 60,000", says Mr Masterson), miniature carvings by Russian artists, freak animals who died natural deaths and unusual "crafts items" from all over the world.

Ripley Museum
Ripley's currently operates in 11 countries

Such "craft items" displayed at Ripley's also have an equally freakish history - one attraction, for example, is a board with 5,600 coats of paint which a man painted and erased every single day of his life.

The mastodon skeleton with a 18ft tusk will be a highlight of the museum at Bangalore.

Also on show will be one of the seven pieces of Mars rock which Ripley's has in its collection - the rocks, according to Mr Masterson, were dislodged from the planet when an asteroid hit it years ago.

The other two museums will be a collection of wax models and world records.

Given the craze among many Indians for setting bizarre records - like growing the largest moustache and pulling vehicles using one's teeth - it is not surprising that Ripley's is setting up their records museum in India.

"It will heavily feature records held by people living in India. The records will be told through stories, pictures, videos and original items," Mr Masterson said.

The Ripley's Believe It or Not! museums are the legacy of cartoonist Robert L Ripley.

Malaysia, Thailand and Hong Kong are among the Asian countries which already have Ripley museums. Two museums will be opening in mainland China soon.