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Photo: P.V. Sivakumar

colours of concern Anjli Paul

Anjli moved to the U.K. in 1968 when she was just eight but says she connects better with Indian art. She started Mystic Inspirations last May with her friends Blory Chana and Sonal Jindal. “An online gallery is the form of future and will appeal to a large section. Any other form of sales will be limited. As of now the online gallery needs to be supported by physical exhibitions. We’ve had shows in Kolkata and Dubai earlier,” she says.

Indian art is going global but limited to small pockets, she feels. “The well known names are selling. But we’re looking to promote young artists and make art accessible to the common man. Art shouldn’t be limited to someone who can buy a painting for 50,000 pounds. You can have a beautiful painting for 1,000 pounds.” Works of artists who approach her are assessed and then selected through “discussions among our panel members, both real-time and through Skype sessions on the Net.” Anjli’s long-term goal is to make “international art houses drop the ‘Indian’ tag while talking of contemporary art. No one talks about Picasso as Spanish contemporary art. Similarly, Indian masterpieces have to be part of contemporary art and not Indian contemporary art,” she asserts.

A section of the proceeds from Mystic Inspirations goes towards charity. In fact, Anjli has been involved hands on with the CAP (Child And Police) Foundation in Hyderabad, visited its centres in Mumbai and Delhi, and started a fund-raising arm in the U.K. “I met the children at the Mumbai centre. Their enthusiasm, warmth and aspirations made me feel I had to do something. I have grown-up children and when I think of the life they had compared to those from impoverished backgrounds, I can’t help but do something for them. In the U.K., children have a right to education. So the CAP Foundation there helps raise funds for children in India. The foundation educates children and trains them for jobs in future. You can merely do charity; but making children grow up to be independent and confident is a worthwhile contribution.”

Personally, Anjli has made tough choices and stood by them. As a single mother of two children, she reflects it wasn’t tough. “My children were fairly grown up when I divorced. There was support from them and my parents,” she says. Her father has been a guiding force for Mystic Inspirations as well. “He opened the exhibition in Kolkata and painted a canvas with artist Sunil Das. We are hoping to bring the piece to Hyderabad next week,” she says. Finally, we can’t resist asking her the reason behind the missing ‘a’ in both her and her father’s names. It isn’t numerology, she says. “It’s my mother. She likes five letter words and dropped the second ‘a’ from my name.”

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