Farmeed Oneshots

7. Sameer's Gallery

At nine in the morning on a fine Saturday, the Pasha kids decided to take a trip to Sameer's gallery and help him with some redecorating and cleaning he needed to do. So right after breakfast, the three troublemakers, in the comfort of their t-shirts and sweatpants, left the house to go to his gallery. The relaxing factor was that the gallery was closed until the evening since it was the weekend, meaning they had it all to themselves.

Sameer opened it over six months ago, and had gained himself a customer base as well as a good running business. After working part-time as an English language tutor, he had managed to gather enough funds to add to his bank account and get a loan. Everything began falling into place. The market for art was quite niche and unique, especially the Pakistani market for it. So starting up was a task which involved lots of patience, heart and composure for when things did not go in his favour.

Sameer had only managed to sell one painting in his first month, which filled him with doubt about his career choice and sent him into a crisis of wondering whether he had made the right decision, as it does with every person who starts a new business. However, the support of Umeed and Haya kept him on his feet. Even when Pasha sahab insisted that he should have chosen a better career path, the two girls acted as the wall that would filter out Pasha sahab's words into being absolutely meaningless . It may be a difficult thing to adjust to, but it gets better with experience.

Luckily for Sameer, his older sister had lots of experience in this field, in the field of having to dodge or counter your only parental figure dispiriting or belittling you for having unique or distinctive interests from the vast. And as much of an emotionally distant relationship Sameer and Umeed had, this was surprisingly what strengthened their bond - the mutual feeling of having to not take their father's words seriously.

The factor was not Umeed just wanting to barge into the argument between the father and son, but rather she felt it was her responsibility to not let Sameer be affected by discouraging words. She experienced it, and she felt a sense of protectiveness over Sameer once she heard the similar sentences "i n fazool cheezon mein kiyun pare ", " aik acha career bhi banaa sakte thay " and other lines of discouragement that she had pretty much memorised from their frequency. And she knew the effect those words can have, so she made sure Sameer does not feel distress in any way by them.

And that did prove her right. Sameer let his anger, frustrations and severe outbursts of emotions convert into art. Every time he would feel beaten, he would either set a canvas in the garden or drive to the gallery, and make art . And Sameer would feel better after it, and have the conversations with himself where he would ultimately agree with Umeed on her advice of not taking things so seriously. Eventually, he had learned to deal with it and prove himself right, by putting his heart, soul and focus into his craft.

After six months of hard work, he managed to gain himself a customer base of loyal, upper-class businesspersons who shared their love for art and a common trait of breaking down paintings to the core. Another advantage of gaining an elite customer base was that he was able to become more flexible with his pricing, charging higher prices and buying better quality canvases and paints to make better paintings, as well as make a hefty amount of revenue.

Watching her brother start to enjoy his life made Umeed feel a sense of pride. The two never intervened in one another's problems, but it was reassuring to see him regain his identity and feel contentment after a bumpy journey. He was enjoying what he was doing, and that's all that mattered to her.

They entered the gallery, Umeed immediately walking around and observing his work. She was very fascinated by the images and patterns on each canvas, the colour variations, the figures, the thickness of the lines. The walls were filled with paintings, each wall segmented into different themes. There were themes of flowers, portraits, sketches, abstract, contemporary art and much more - everything looked well-rounded.