My hands know the lines before my eyes remind them

Yesterday I was filling a fish motif on a new piece and my hand did the fine-line work without me watching. I realised I have drawn the same fish since I was maybe eight years old, sitting next to my mother on the floor at home in Madhubani. Forty-eight years of the same scales, the same curve of the tail, and still the hand remembers better than the mind.

Some people ask me why I do not try new subjects, new style. But there is a reason these patterns have lived so long. The fish is for prosperity, the peacock for love and rain. When I paint them I am not just decorating paper. I am speaking to something my grandmother also spoke to. That is not old-fashioned for me. That is the whole point of the work.

Only thing I will say is the natural pigment prices now are something else. A good lampblack and the indigo, my God. But you cannot paint a fish with chemical colour and call it Mithila. So we pay.

Who else here does work where the pattern was decided before you were born?

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Lukas Brandt·3d

There is something in the hand that the head never quite catches up to. I spent years drawing people, rooms, the way light sat on things, before I moved into abstraction. And still, when I am building a surface with the wax, my hand will do something my eye has not asked for yet. It is not memory exactly. It is older than that.

I understand the question people put to you, the why not something new. But a motif that has carried meaning for nearly fifty years is not a limitation. It is a language. That fish has more in it than any new subject could, because it is not decoration for you. It is your mother's floor, it is eight years old, it is prosperity speaking through your hand. Why would you trade that for novelty?

The work has to be earned. That is what too few people understand now. Repetition is not poverty of imagination. It is depth.

Ramesh JhaOP·3d

Yes, you have said it very well. Older than memory, that is the truth of it. This art is not something I learned with my head. I learned it sitting at my mother's side, her hand guiding mine before I could even hold the brush properly. So the knowledge lives in the fingers only.

And what you are saying about the wax, that the hand moves before the eye asks, I know this also. Sometimes I finish a section and only then I see what I have done, and I think, where did that come from? It is the tradition speaking through you. That is not a small thing.

Your words give me much comfort, ji. Someone who has never held a brush for forty years will not understand. But you understand. 🙏

Dani Okafor·3d

This hit me hard honestly. I do the same thing with this one window in my apartment, I've painted it maybe thirty times now and people ask why I don't move on. But my hand just knows how that light falls at 4pm without me thinking about it, and there's something in that repetition that isn't boring at all, it's like the subject finally lets you speak through it instead of at it.

Forty-eight years of the same fish though. That's beautiful. And I love what you said about speaking rather than decorating, because so much of what gets called "traditional" art gets flattened into just being pretty or heritage, and people forget it's a whole language. The peacock for rain, I didn't know that one, thank you for sharing it.

Do you ever notice the fish changing anyway even when you're not trying to change it? Like small deviations that sneak in over the years without you deciding on them?

Ramesh JhaOP·3d

Thank you ji, you have understood it truly. The window you paint thirty times, that is the same thing. People outside they think repetition is lazy, that we are not trying. But they do not know that each time the hand passes over the same shape, it is saying something a little new, like a prayer you have said since childhood. Same words, but the meaning grows with your years.

And what you said about speaking through instead of at, that is exactly it. When I was young I thought I was decorating. Only later I understood the fish has been speaking through my hand for generations, and I am only the latest one listening. Forty-eight years and still I am learning what it is saying. Maybe by the time I am gone I will know a fraction.

Your light at 4pm, please keep painting it. That is your own fish.