This is not as sad as it sounds. The Big Guns had also helped to prop up a lot of bad art, like Ravi Varmas (fake or real), the boobs and bums variety of colonial art, and a lot that could only be described as kitsch. What is worse, it is rumoured that one such impressario promised our cultural department vast funds and actually milked them of what they had! The minister of cultural affairs had better look into his Augean stables.

So, before we have really established the parameters of our art, we have certainly established those of scams in the art world. Therefore, it is better that art prices do not boom as it spares the art world a lot of unwanted attention. And without this attention, art can develop quietly.

It is doing that, too. Only recently at the Village Gallery, I found that Kabir Narang, whose photograph of autumn leaves at Keble College I had commented on some time back, has actually become a full-fledged creative artist. Not only has he taken up the theme of the bicycle, an inseparable companion of the Oxford student, he has also innovated upon the technical ploy of subsequent exposures to give one a far wide vista than one would get otherwise.

In a photograph of the tower of Christ Church College, at Oxford, where Lewis Caroll wrote Alice in Wonderland, he has used the camera with great innovation and given us what is definitely more than just a well-composed ``pretty picture'', so that the camera covers up for lack of skill. It is his use of his instrument that gives one the feeling that he has a future as a photographer, and that his photographs at a mere Rs 700 each at present are worth investing in.

Similarly, at Art Konsult, one finds the work of another young artist, Sharad Kumar, who produces sculptures and reliefs in the Madhubani tradition he has inherited from his grandmother, Chandrakala Devi. He, too, is to be noted because he has brought Madhubani art out of its decorative bridal chamber origins to the level of serious three dimensional sculpture in papier mache, giving it a new life and future. His works, large panels and sculptures, are well worth the Rs 12,000-15,000 they are priced at.

Every gallery has such artists, and serious collectors with an eye for good works can go and look for the works of Neeraj Bakshi at Art Indus. They are generally below Rs 9,000. Arushi Arts can be approached primarily for the works of Mohinder Soni. Gallery Ganesha stocks the work of the up and coming realist painter, Indravir Arya, the younger brother of Rahul Arya. Dhoomimal Gallery is the repository of the works of Souza, Gade and Sailoz Mookherjea.

And Dhoomimal Art Centre of those of Dharma Narayan Das Gupta. The Delhi Gallery has Ram Kinkar Baij and the Bengal School, while Art Heritage has the best collection of Chitta Prasad's prints.

The Delhi art market probably has more works on sale in the open than any other city in India, but one has to keep an eye open for fakes as there are a considerable number of these. Also, as contemporary Indian art is yet to develop a stature similar to that of European and US contemporary art, there are few detailed studies of the techniques used by artists (a painter's brush-stroke is a far better signature than his inscription), so authentication is still a hit-or-miss process. But this should not prevent collectors turning to the works of young artists (which are almost never faked) and building a collection for the future on a sound basis. That's what summers are for. Browsing and buying. And the purchases of summer are generally far better than what one picks up otherwise. They are not hidden in a cloud of hype and hard-sell techniques. Summers are for relaxed buying; and therefore, that much better.