Today I was cleaning my brushes after finishing a small fish motif piece and I counted the years on the oldest one. That brush came from my mother's hand when I was maybe seventeen. She gave it to me for my first independent commission, a wedding scroll. It has lost hairs, the handle is wrapped in thread twice over, but the point is still true.

My son says I should buy new ones, that the bamboo from the market is cheap. But a brush that has learned your hand is not the same as a new one. It knows how much pressure I put when I am drawing the fine lines of the peacock feathers. New brush, it will wobble. This one, it behaves.

People these days they think tools are to be replaced when they become old. I think tools become useful only when they become old. Like a good wife's rolling pin or my father's plough, still in the shed even though we have tractor now. Some things you keep because they carry the memory of the work.

The thread wrapping is from my mother's old sari, by the way. So even the repair is from her. How can I throw that away. 🙏