A five-storey building will come up on 14 cottahs of land adjoining Mayer Bari in Bagbazar that will have a hall from where prasad will be distributed to visitors to the house of Sri Sarada Devi, wife of Sri Ramakrishna Parmahansa.
The building will also house quarters for visiting monks.
Unlike Belur Math, the global headquarters of Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission, the house where Sri Sarada Devi had lived for 11 years from 1909 to 1920 in Bagbazar does not have a dedicated hall where prasad can be offered to visitors who pour in from across the country and abroad every day.
Senior monks of Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission said visitors to Mayer Bari were now accommodated in rooms either on the first floor of the house or adjoining houses, all of which are very old.
“With the rise in the number of visitors, we realised there was an immediate need for space where we could set up a kitchen and a hall to distribute daily prasad and make provisions to accommodate monks in quarters,” said Swami Nityamuktananda of Mayer Bari.
The building will have a library where rare manuscripts and letters, which are now in Udbodhan House opposite Mayer Bari, will be kept for readers to browse through.
“On special occasions, thousands of visitors come to Mayer Bari. We struggle to find space to distribute prasad. The new building will largely address this concern,” said a senior monk.
Senior monks said most of the houses, including the one where Sri Sarada Devi had lived and breathed her last on July 28, 1920, were old, and thorough repairs would be difficult with portions crumbling during renovation.
A plot of land on Durgacharan Mukherjee Street adjoining Mayer Bari was acquired for the new building.
“It will take around two years for the construction. The cost of the project is around Rs 6 crore,” said a senior monk. The new building will also provide space to store the Utbodhan magazine, the mouthpiece of Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission.
Senior monks said Udbodhan House lacked space to store the monthly magazines once they were printed. The new building will have a dedicated space on the ground floor where the magazines will be stored before distribution.
The building will also have a space where special Math and Mission items will be put on display.