For really to think about someone means thinking about that person every minute of the day, without letting one's thoughts be diverted by anything – by meals, by a fly that settles on one's cheek, by household duties, or by a sudden itch somewhere. But there are always flies and itches. That's why life is difficult to live.
–Albert Camus, The Plague
His father hated him more than anyone else and always called him rang'a-tsaer; a finch. He spent his entire youth drawing, sketching and painting. Even on the day he received the gold medal in fine arts (painting) from his university, nobody in his circle of family or friends showed him any appreciation. A permanent government job in Kashmir meant much more than winning gold medals and accolades.
So after dabbling in the arts for a while, he got a government job in the arts college where he had studied. His father stopped taunting him at once. But he wasn't able to establish himself as an artist yet. He was like any other government employee, earning a reasonable salary. His immediate society was eager to see its young generation as doctors, engineers, management-professionals and bureaucrats and did not care much for writers, artists, musicians, singers and sculptors. Now, only those who doubled as doctor-writers or engineer-painters or bureaucrat-singers or management-professional-guitarists were forgiven for their artistic side. Such was the case with Irshad Ahmad Lone.