Head to Head with Hemraj 1. Art as a profession is still not seen as a safe career option: How will this change ever come about in a country like ours? “Just like a female is born with a particular number of eggs right at her birth, so is an painter born with a particular number of paintings right at his birth” (analogized fascinatingly by Hemraj). When we know art to be as intense and inevitable a phenomenon as this, the question of art as an unsafe career option bedims. How? Since art to an artist is as much his destiny as heat to fire. To have the pressure to sell a painting is almost a sacrilege, for the passion to create is to overpower the urge to sell: make money. Sounds idealistic ? But come to think of it: the process that an artist shall go through to churn deep and pure art would only be contaminated by the urge to make money: the two cannot co habit. Art isn’t a career at all: it is a way of life; it is a being helplessly and effortlessly expressing one’s s