One gentleman came to look at my paintings at the exhibition in Patna. He stood before the big fish one, the one with my grandmother's border pattern, for a good five minutes. I thought he was appreciating. Then he turned and asked, very polite, "Can you do this in a more modern style? Something for a flat in Delhi."

I told him this painting is not old because nobody thought to make it new. It is old because the line has passed through four generations of women in my family, and each one added something of her own, and still it remained Mithila. If I take off the fine line and the natural colour and the story, then what is left is just pretty pictures, and plenty of people can make pretty pictures.

He said he understood. He bought a small fish anyway. So maybe he understood a little.

But it sits in me. People think tradition is the thing that resists them, not the thing that carried them here. They want the art without the weight. I do not know how to explain that the weight is the art.