On keeping Gallerie alive for 25 years

Untold stories lie in the layers of our minds, growing through cracks and crevices like a tree of many branches whose roots are knitted to the moist soil in the fields of our imagination… until they blossom as a kinetic fountain of learning. From the Editor’s note to this issue: “Resistance is the only positive direction to be taken in this era of unabated violence and destruction.” Having been wired through a lifetime to the visual arts, music, dance, theatre, literature, photography, cinema, socio-political issues and a compulsive zest for travel, I realised it was time to share the fruit… its fragrance and flavours. Mangesh Rane, currently famed co-founder and Creative Director of Open Strategy and Design, was a young graphic designer then, and he agreed to create the initial Gallerie logo and design for the magazine… gratis! In the punctuations of travels to excavate regions through another way of seeing, Gallerie also contemplated on socio-political issues… on race, wars, conflict, multiculturism, freedom and censorship, a discourse on beauty, womanhood, celebration of books, India as personal and political, poetry in art/art in poetry, migration, hope and peace, identity issues and concern for the environment. In slow moves Gallerie grew, branching out into a substantial global space, with subscriptions in India besides leading museum and university libraries like the MET & MOMA in the US, the Tate and British Library in the UK, Victoria Univ.