I have been buying my painting paper from the same small place in Bhagalpur since I was a young man. My mother also used to get from them only. This paper is hand-made, khadi, you can feel the fibers with your fingers, the way it takes the natural color is different from anything machine made. For Mithila work this matters very much because the line work is everything, the paper must hold a fine line without bleeding, but also it must have some tooth, some roughness for the color to sit on.

Last month I ordered my usual stack. And it came, and I thought maybe I received a bad batch. But I used it for three pieces now and it is not the same. The surface is smoother. Too smooth. The water-based colors are sliding instead of settling. The line is fine but the paper does not grip the pigment like before. I called the shop and the man told me their master craftsman retired and the new man is trying to "improve" the process. He said this like it is good news.

I am sitting here with a half-finished fish motif on this new paper and the tail is not right. The color is not sitting where I put it. It is not the paper's fault maybe, it is my hand not trusting the surface. But how many years to learn a new paper when you already know one for twenty years. I do not want to start again. I want the old paper back.

Has anyone else faced this with a material that changed without warning? Not a brand reformulation but the actual hands that made it, the knowledge that left. How do you decide whether to adapt or to find a new source altogether.