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Starry-eyed migrants streaming into Mumbai to make it big in Bollywood has become a tired cliche. A quieter, more tranquil and largely unnoticed ingress into another Indian metropolis, Delhi, has been by artists from distant corners and coasts of the country. Drawn here over the last decade or so by the mantra of make-it-rich-quick-while-you-can, young artists from Orissa, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, and elsewhere have uprooted themselves and their families to set up shop here, often, giving up their day jobs to do so.

But now that the bells have begun to toll for the art mart — evidently taking its cue from the stock market — several nouveau-Delhiwallas and indigenous artists are finding themselves in no man’s land. Some have even become homeless, no longer able to afford the rent and with not much to go back to, while others, who suddenly became the flavour of the day ("hot" or "cool" in today's parlance), struck it rich and wildly bought real estate, are now stuck with EMIs that they can no longer pay. Not to speak of the stacks of unsold canvases as galleries that once promised them the moon slink away.

These are the bitter fruits of "post-modern capitalism" as some critics aver. Yet, yet, and strangely, one can see the glimmer of a sense of liberation — a freedom from commercial constraints and the illusion of an unlimited market. Yanking off the yoke of dictatorial, template-setting auction houses and wily art entrepreneurs — as well as turning a deaf ear to globalisation — an increasing number of artists seem to be returning to their original impulses. Back to why they became artists in the first place.

No, it's not quite time to bring out the bubbly to celebrate the snatching of victory out of the jaws of defeat — a recession inadvertently giving birth to a renaissance. However, a beginning has been made at this midnight hour for the Cinderellas and Cinderfellas of the contemporary art world.

In times when art and fashion, artists and fashionistas shared the same platform, art had to be cool and entertaining and there was no time for reflection. No time to go down solitary paths, away from imposed and fashionably-in trends; away as well from art critics and historians who align their opinions with pronouncements by the pundits from the pulpits of international art.

Well, now artists have all the time in the world to do so: competitive collectors are not exactly queuing up to book blank canvases. A painter friend — not an auction habitué — tells me that business has actually not been too bad for her in the last six months: "People are coming back to real art," she says. I am not sure what she means by real art. Perhaps the infatuation with technology-driven art, installations, and performance art in India is fading.

Happily, in some of the scattered addas of Delhi, artists are now talking about art and ideas. And, even more importantly, about the need to reboot. Last Saturday at the opening of the exhibition, Bengal Patachitra, at Siddhartha Tagore’s gallery, Art Konsult, many of the paintings of folk and tribal artists were being snapped up by young painters.

It wasn't just the modest prices that spurred the buyers: they were intrigued by how contemporary these works were despite the "storytellers of Bengal" adhering to traditional techniques and craft. The urban artists were, Tagore explains, "looking for ways to connect with their roots and traditions" and reinvigorate their own work.

Was back to the future a way out of the cul-de-sac that many of the artists now found themselves in? Several tribal and folk artists have managed to be contemporary and yet traditional. Some of the scroll-like paintings incorporate recent events, in addition to themes from Indian epics.

Perhaps in the impasse, a way out would be back to the future: not to get stuck there but to come back re-ignited.