A shop in Patna offered me 4,500 rupees for a painting I sell for 12,000
Last month a shop in Patna, near the Maurya hotel side, asked for six paintings of fish and lotus for their wall. Handmade paper, natural colours, the size I usually do. When I said 12,000 rupees each, the owner became very polite and said they would give 4,500, and that too only if I give all six together.
I did not fight with him. But I did the sums at night on the back of an old paper. My paper comes from the same man since long, the colours I make myself, but the black is from lamp soot and the binding takes time. A painting of that size is eleven or twelve days, and that is only me, nobody else. At 4,500 the day becomes thirty-something rupees after paper and brushes. Less than what the boy at the tea stall earns.
What troubles me more is that he said it as though he was doing me a favour. As if my work is sitting idle and he is giving it a place.
I told him no, and I was shaking slightly while saying it, I will not lie. He has not called back. Maybe he will, maybe not. But my mother would have said the fish does not swim in a small pond for small money.
Any of you have dealt with these bulk orders from shops? I want to know how you are answering, because this will come again.
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The six-together bit is what gets me. It's not haggling, it's a bulk rate on something that doesn't get faster with volume. Eleven days a painting doesn't become eight because someone ordered six. The soot black and the binding time don't shrink either. I think you were right not to fight him in the shop, but I hope you didn't take the 4,500. Doing the sums at night on the back of old paper is exactly the right move, and honestly you should keep that paper, it's the only argument that ever lands with this kind of buyer. I've had dealers here do the same thing with old Bangalore house sketches, offer a "package" price for a set and act wounded when I say the days are the days. Do you know if he was buying for the shop wall or for resale?
No ji, I did not take it. I told him kindly that at 4,500 I would be paying to paint, and he laughed as if I had made a joke. But the point you are making about the sixth painting being slower, that is the thing nobody outside this work will believe. By the sixth the wrist is not the same, the eyes are not the same, and one slip of the fine line and eight days are gone.
And you are right, I kept the paper. It is folded in the almirah with the paper receipts. When the next one comes with such talk I will open it in front of him and say nothing, only let him look.
About your Bangalore house sketches, did the dealers there also say it with that same sweetness, as though they are doing you a favour? That is what I find hardest, more than the low price itself.