Pakistani creator of world's smallest vacuum cleaner says poverty pushed him to seek fame

LAHORE: A Pakistani miniature artist who holds the Guinness World Record for creating the smallest vacuum cleaner said growing up in poverty had inspired him to get ahead and pursue fame and wealth.
Ahsan Qayyum, who belongs to Gujranwala district in northern Punjab, is known for sculpting tiny pieces of art out of lead pencils and graphite.
Born into a poor family, the 28-year-old artist said though his parents could not afford to send his sister to high school and thus married her off, they invested their meagre resources in his education at a local school with the hope that he would change the family’s fortunes one day.
“When you are broke, you have the urge to accomplish something special in life,” Qayyum told Arab News in an interview this week, describing his inspirations. “My circumstances compelled me to find new avenues where I could gain recognition and generate income.”
He said creating miniatures in his spare time gave him peace and helped him fight his “identity crisis.”
Last year, in March, Qayyum found a purpose when he discovered that an Indian miniature artist had made the world’s smallest vacuum cleaner.
“I resolved to break the record and made an official attempt after four months by building a device that was only 1.9 centimeters long,” he said. “To my dismay, the Indian artist created an even tinier variant of his creation that measured 1.76 centimeters.”
Qayyum refused to give up and asked his record manager to allow him another chance. This time he reduced the size of his vacuum cleaner to 1.46 centimeters and resubmitted the evidence. The Indian artist also made another attempt and presented an even smaller machine.
“I was mentally prepared to pursue the competition and ultimately set a new world record by further reducing the size of the gadget to 1.3 centimeters. It was powered by electricity and worked perfectly,” Qayyum said.
The device he has created is essentially a small, hollowed out pencil fitted with a miniaturized piece of machinery that can lift dust through suction using negative internal pressure.
This is not Qayyum’s first record: In 2019, he made his first Guinness World Record by carving the graphite of a lead pencil into 75 small pieces of chain.
“We need to be mentally committed to a project,” Qayyum said. “The biggest mistake we make is to think that something is impossible. The first thing you have to do is decide and then continue to reinforce that decision over and over again.”
This perseverance also saved him during the most difficult phase of his life, Qayyum said, when his mother passed away in 2011, his father lost his job and the artist had to quit his education to start earning a living.
“That’s when I came to Lahore where one of my relatives got me a job at a shoe factory,” he said. “The 12-hour shift in a closed-door, humid environment continued to remind me that I wanted to do something different and quit the monotonous work.”
While he could not resume his education, Qayyum kept pursuing his passion for artistic work and today works as a graphic designer with a major publishing company in Lahore and is “content” with the last eight years of his life.
“To achieve a goal,” Qayyum said, “you must first believe in its likelihood. I was keen to make small objects and continued to nurture my passion, which ultimately got me to this point.”