Anyone who has read of Madame Tussaud’s and other famous wax museums would have longed to see how life-like wax figures look like. Though Madama Tussaud, the most famous wax sculptor, established her first permanent exhibition in London in 1835, India had to wait for the visionary Sunil Kandalloor to get its very first wax museum in the year 2000. In 2019, Trivandrum got its own wax museum, which was Kerala’s second. The museum is located near the Sree Padmanabha Swamy Temple in the capital city of Thiruvananthapuram.

Carefully curated collection
As is typical of most wax museums around the world, Sunil’s Wax Museum also has a collection of sculptures of carefully selected famous people and contemporary personalities. Currently, there are 31 wax statues of popular figures from politics, sports, movies and history, including world figures, but the focus is mainly on India and Kerala. 

Among the iconic figures immortalised in wax are world leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, past and current political leaders, much loved sports stars like Maradona, Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli, historical figures like Sree Chitra Thirunal, the last ruling Maharaja of the princely state of Travancore of which Thiruvananthapuram was the capital, and of course, the icons without whom no wax museum would be complete – superstars from the film industry like Rajnikanth, Mammootty, and Mohanlal. 

A dream is born
Mumbai-based artist Sunil Kandalloor was born in Kandalloor, a small village in Alappuzha district of Kerala, and trained in Fine Arts at the district’s Madhava Fine Arts College. His interest in wax sculptures was ignited when he first saw photographs of the wax models of Fidel Castro and Jesse Owens. He decided to try out his own wax statues and that started him on the path of his life’s vocation.

After nearly a decade of experimentation, he set up India’s first wax museum at Kanyakumari district in South India but unfortunately it had to be closed down. He then moved the museum to Lonavla in the year 2000 and finally, India’s had its first wax museum.