When someone walks into a crowded room, it doesn't take a psychic to make a few instinctive guesses about what the person's attributes may be. It's easy to read people by the way they walk — the way they hold their head high or if they slouch, if they make eye contact or if they shuffle in and search the room with shifty, nervous eyes.

Similarly, a lot can be said and read about the way a newcomer enters an industry. It can either be with an ear-drum damaging 'Woohoo, lookie here. I have arrived! Yes, say helloooooo to competition boys and girls', an insecure bang or it can be a sleeker, refined and more poised entry.

The latter is the way Maram and Aabroo — two thoroughbred and professional photographers — stepped into Pakistan's lucrative fashion ballroom but not with the slightest bit of trepidation, mind you. Their story is an interesting one — both friends completed their degrees in public administration from the Punjab University in Lahore eight years ago. It was whilst at Kinnaird College during their Bachelors that Maram and Aabroo realised their aptitude and zeal for photography.

While studying, the girls would do photo shoots (rishta pictures as Maram puts it) and wedding photography for some of the girls at college and began earning some money on the side. But coming back to their graduation from Punjab University, both Maram and Aabroo thought they were heading full force into thoroughly corporate jobs. But fate works in mysterious ways and when they arrived in Abu Dhabi with CVs in hand to land jobs in the corporate sector, they overheard a conversation discussing an Arab lady who was looking for a photographer.

And as clichéd as this may read, the rest is history. Maram and Aabroo did the unexpected and made photography their means of livelihood. Adverse reactions from their families were expected. “We had a lot of arguments,” Maram says, “they were never okay with it,” implying that they still aren't.

“Our parents think this is a step down,” Aabroo pipes in, “Why are you doing this, they'd say, you could be working in a multinational or a bank...”

Given that the girls have been true to their work for the past 11 years (since 1995), the local industry has been welcoming but only on the face of it. No surprise, that.

When they came on to the scene four years ago “everyone was very encouraging,” says Aabroo. “But they're hypocrites and it's very tough,” she continues, sounding less angry, “it's like we're going through an emotional breakdown almost every week, but then we have to get ourselves together and start again. But the hypocrisy,” Aabroo reiterates, “drains us mentally.”

In a country like Pakistan where there's quite a bit of mediocrity in the media and fashion circuit, it comes as no surprise when some 'higher-ups' get stress disorders whenever fresh talent enters their so-called 'territory'. Like animals that fight to the death — tails up in a tizzy, teeth clenched and snarling like alley cats in the night — these yahoos verbally poke, jab, victimise and threaten in whichever way possible. “People in the industry perceived that we'd fizzle out, but we've proved them wrong,” says Aabroo. “We've made our own space. We don't believe in mediocrity.

While in conversation with the girls, I realised that those that comprise the fashion scene have never stopped addressing and treating Maram Aabroo as newcomers. Do they mean to belittle the girls and their work by doing so? Both Maram and Aabroo are as confounded as I am.

Coming back to the fashion mafia which has been regularly threatening the girls, they cite a recent incident which serves as a disgusting reminder of the utter smut and mediocrity present in local fashion. Recently, Maram Aabroo got three or four shoots done with a previously lesser known female model. Once the shoots were published in glossies, more and more offers started coming her way. She brushed them off, saying that she was keen on working only with Maram Aabroo for now. “Everyone turned on us,” Aabroo says, “and that's when the threats began.

“Both Maram and I have been able to stick together and fight it out. But it's sad that we constantly have to wage a war against such attitudes,” she says. “We were never encouraged but now that we've made it, we're treated badly, even downright ignored. We may lack PR skills, but we don't believe in buttering anyone up — we only focus on the quality of our work.”

“The support of our friends keeps us going,” says Maram. Quite frankly, at the end of the day and in this frenzied dog-eat-dog media circuit, that's really all that matters.