Shosha also has a scheme to help the man in the street buy art painlessly, with one down payment and easy, interest-free instalments. During the period they are paying their instalments, they are allowed to take their work of art home for the weekend. Shosha takes the responsibility of transporting it safely there and back. During the rest of the week, the work is hired out to head offices of middle-range companies. The benefits of this arrangement are threefold. Buyers benefit because their instalments are interest-free. It is possible for the seller to give them this benefit because he makes many times more than the interest in weekly rent from the companies who hire the work. The hiring companies benefit because they do not have to pay the price of the work that gives their image a boost; and they get different paintings every six months or so, breaking the monotony.

Vikram Shah, the young businessman-owner of Shosha, benefits by the increased footfalls in his gallery leading to higher turnover. The artists win a bonanza of benefits. Not only do their paintings get sold at the right prices, but the increased viewership for and sheer reach of their work makes their signatures more widely known.

Vikram Shah's way of conducting his business is the result of his long-cherished dream about art. He dreams of a day when commuters on Mumbai's locals will discuss paintings as enthusiastically as they do Hindi films. Towards this end he also holds art-appreciation workshops in his gallery. This year he has taken one more step towards realizing his dream. He has organized a one-day seminar on ‘The Many Views of Art’ for the lay person. Shreyas Kubdekar, a popular lecturer in Economics at the college and a close friend of Shah's, has promised to fill at least half the house with students. Shah is happy because students are as ‘lay’ as you can get.

Seminars on art are a dime a dozen, but each is driven by the interests of a clique of artists and critics. Shah knows that the uninitiated have no interest in the internal politics of the art world. They simply want information about the world of art and why painters paint the way they do. With a view to inform the audience, Shah has invited speakers from across aesthetic ideologies and ages. The speakers have agreed to be there, with many reservations. The questions that have bothered them are: Who is Vikram Shah? Or rather, who the hell is Vikram Shah? Where has he suddenly sprouted from? How can an art gallery be called Shosha? How can a serious thing like art be sold in a bazaar? Why is the seminar being held in a college in the eastern suburbs of the city of all places, instead of somewhere in South Mumbai?