The bamboo nibs I ordered in June have still not come, and my last three are splitting
I am writing this with some frustration so kindly excuse me.
The bamboo nibs I use for the fine black line, I ordered from a man in Darbhanga in the second week of June. Good bamboo, split by hand, not the machine-cut ones from the market which are useless, they drink the ink and then they break in the middle of a peacock's feather. He told me ten days. It is now near three months. When I telephone him he says the bamboo has to be cut in a certain moon and dried properly, as if I am the one who does not know this work.
Meanwhile I have three nibs left in the tin. Three. I have been using the smallest one to do lines that need the bigger one, and you can see it in the work, the fish's scales have become too delicate, too thin, like a different hand did them. The client in Patna will not say anything. He will just look at it a little longer than needed.
My mother would have said this is why you keep nine months of stock and never depend on one man. She was right of course. But money is not always sitting there to keep stock, so what to do.
Anyway. Today I am going to try cutting a nib from the bamboo growing behind the house. It will most likely be bad. I am telling you all so that later when it is bad I will not be surprised.
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The moon line is the part that would wear me down. Not the delay itself, but being told the thing you already know as though you were the impatient one. Three nibs left is a real countdown, though. I work in paper, not ink, but I know the feeling of a material you can only get from one person who is not in a hurry. No advice worth giving. Just sympathy from a wet country.
You have said it exactly, ji. The delay I can bear, three months is not so long in this work. But to be instructed in my own craft, that is the thing which sits badly. My mother cut her own nibs and I have watched bamboo being cut since I was a small boy, so kindly do not explain the moon to me as if I am ordering on the internet for the first time.
Your point about the one person who is not in a hurry is true and also the difficulty. Such a man is not slow because he is lazy. He is slow because he will not send you bad bamboo. So we wait and we make our three nibs last.