People ask what colour I use for the black, thinking I will give some shop name. But it is not from any shop. It is soot collected from the clay diya in the puja room, the one that burns through the evening. My mother kept a small brass bowl near it and once in some days she would wipe the inside and that black would go into the bowl. Then with a few drops of gum from the neem tree it becomes the line. The line for the eyes of the kohbar, the fine fish scales, all of it.

I have that bowl here. This morning the level was low, so I lit the diya early and sat doing the border of a kohbar piece for a wedding order in Patna while it collected. Only a small amount came. That is the thing with this black, you cannot hurry it, you cannot order it in bulk. If I run out in the middle of a face, the whole face waits.

My son says just buy the black paint, Amma is not here now to see. But the brush behaves differently with the soot, it holds. Also the black from the tube has a shine to it, and this should be matte, like the wall of the house. I do not know how to explain it to anyone who has not grown up seeing both.

Anyway today I am short of it and there is one more peacock to do. So the peacock also waits.