The girl's father asked what "scope" is there in this work
Yesterday one man came to my house, his daughter is 14, she has been learning with me on Sundays since four months. She is good, ji, very steady hand, better than many boys who come and go. He sat in the verandah drinking tea for one hour and did not look at a single painting. Then he asked what scope is there in this work.
I did not have proper answer.
I said she is learning our own art of Mithila, this is not some hobby, this is what our grandmothers did on the walls for every marriage and every festival, whole world is now buying it. He nodded in that way people nod when they have already decided.
Truth I did not say: last month I sold one painting for 9,000 rupees and it took me 22 days. In between I did two marriage invitations for a family in Darbhanga for 2,000 each because the money was needed that week. Her father is not a fool. He has seen my house. He is thinking of tuition classes where the rate is fixed every month and no one asks if the fish has meaning.
She will come next Sunday, I think. She wants to. But I am also knowing that one more Sunday and he may stop her.
We talk about reviving the art, saving the art. Nobody talks about whose daughter is going to sit for 22 days for 9,000 rupees after I am gone.
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This made my chest tight. Not because of his question exactly, but because you said you didn't have a proper answer. You DO have one, you just gave it while he was already gone from the conversation.
Here's the thing though, and I say this as someone who paints with my hands for a living: "the whole world is buying it" is the answer you give a man who only counts money. It's true and it's fair, use it. But the real answer is that his daughter has a steady hand at 14 and she's learning something her grandmothers did on the walls for weddings and festivals. That's not scope talk, that's inheritance. You're handing her something that already belongs to her.
I'm self taught, no degree, no certificate, and I've had plenty of people ask me what the point is. The point is she'll carry it either way. Whether he nods or not.
Keep teaching her on Sundays.
ngl the "he was already gone from the conversation" line is the whole thing. dude sat an hour and looked at zero paintings, that's not a guy waiting on an argument, that's a guy who decided before he walked in. you can't out-answer that.
though i'd push back a little on handing him the money answer. it's true and it works, but it also teaches him the work is only worth what a buyer says it's worth, and then the next guy asks the same question louder. i paint for money half the time and i still think that's a trap.
the steady hand at 14 is the answer. everything else is just translation for people who can't hear it.
You are right ji, and I have been sitting with this since yesterday. I gave him the money answer because it is the one he can hear. But you have caught the thing I did not want to see. If I say the worth is what the buyer pays, then tomorrow he will ask why one painting goes for this and another for that, and I will have made myself small in my own verandah.
The steady hand. Yes. That is the real thing and I did not say it. Four months and she sits without fidgeting, her lines do not shake at the corners, she asks me why the fish is drawn with two eyes on one side and I explain and she remembers it next Sunday. That is not scope, ji. That is a person arriving. Her father was not asking about her, he was asking about the market, and I answered him in his own language instead of mine.
But I will tell you honestly, the money answer is not only fear. There is a reason it comes out of my mouth so fast. In my own house we have needed it. So when a man like him asks, half of me wants to prove the art can feed a family, because for many years in mine it could not. That is my weakness, not the art's. I should not hand it to him as if it is the whole truth.
I will speak to him again. Not to argue. Just to say the girl is good, and that is separate from whatever he decides.
You have said it exactly, ji. "Inheritance, not scope" - I will keep this line. Yesterday I was thinking of it as a business question and I reached for the only language he was listening in. But you are right, the girl did not come to me for scope. She comes every Sunday, sits straight, does not chatter, and her lines are already finer than children twice her age. That is not a market. That is something coming back into a family.
I have decided one thing. Next Sunday when she comes, I will not wait for her father. I will show her the old wall pattern my mother used for the kohbar, the one with the fish and the bamboo grove, and I will tell her whose hands it came through. If the father asks again, I will give him both answers. The money one, and then the other one. Let him choose which he hears.