A six-year-old proposal of Karnataka Tulu Sahitya Academy to build a Tulu Samskritika Bhavan here is in the process of realisation, subject to availability of more funds than what is estimated now.
The proposal for the bhavan was made by the former president of the academy M.K. Seetharama Kulal in 2006. Following this, the government allotted 50 cents of land to the academy near Urwa Stores to construct the bhavan.
The Public Works Department (PWD) is building the cellar plus three-storey bhavan. In that the structures of the cellar and ground floor have been completed and columns for the first floor were being erected now.
Registrar of the academy B. Chandrahasa Rai said the project costs Rs. 4.9 crore project, of which the government had released Rs. 3 crore. He said Rs. 1.93 crore had been spent.
The office of the academy has been functioning from rented rooms in the Mangalore City Corporation building since the academy’s inception in 1994. Mr. Rai said the academy paid a monthly rent of Rs. 9,272 to the corporation. Once the new building is ready, its office will be shifted and the rental amount could be used for the activities of the academy. The building will have a 1,000-seat auditorium, a museum to showcase rare artefacts related to Tulu life and culture, and games, a reading room and a library with research works on Tulu culture and life histories of Tulu writers, artistes and thinkers.
Tulu Samskritika Bhavan will have an audiovisual library to store compact discs on Tulu folk games and dances, Tuluva rites and rituals, ‘Bhutharadhane’, serpent worship, ‘Kambala’, Yakshagana, and Chennemane.
A PWD official said that the bhavan might require Rs. 2 crore more (than Rs. 4.9 crore) to realise all the plans. Mr. Rai said that the demand will be placed before the governemnt if the PWD gave a revised estimation.
