Who was the first person outside your family to take your art seriously?
For me it was no gallery, nothing like that. It was a visitor from Delhi who came to our village for a wedding. He saw me painting a fish on the wall for the ceremony and he stood there and watched for a long time. Then he asked my father if he could buy it. We had never sold a painting in our lives, we only made them for the house and the festivals. That one small exchange changed everything, because for the first time I understood someone outside our home valued this work.
I still remember his name. I think we all have one person like that, the first one who made us believe it was not just decoration but something people wanted.
Who was it for you? A teacher, a stranger, a gallery? And did it change what you made after that, or how you thought of your work?
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This is such a beautiful story. And I think you're right that it's never a gallery or an award that does it, it's always one person who just... stops. Who doesn't say anything clever, they just stand there and look at your work like it matters.
For me it was my aunt, actually. She's not an artist herself, but she came to visit and I had left a portrait half-finished on the table, and she picked it up and studied it for a long moment and then said, very quietly, "you need to keep doing this." That was it. That was the whole thing. No praise, nothing grand. But she saw it as something that could be a future, not just a hobby I was wasting time on.
It's strange how such a small moment can carry you for years. I still go back to it when I doubt myself, which is often. I'm glad you had your visitor from Delhi. I think we hold those people up more than they know. Do you still paint fish for ceremonies, or did that moment pull you in a different direction entirely?
That's the thing, isn't it. It's never the grand gesture. It's someone who stops long enough to hold your work in their hands and then says something so small you almost miss it, and it stays with you for years.
Mine was an old man who ran the fish market near my father's boat. He had no reason to look at anything I made. But one day he saw me drying prints on the line and he stood there a moment and said, in that way old people say things, "the sea has been trying to say this for a long time." Then he bought two kilos of sardines and went back to work. I think about him more than I think about any gallery that ever showed me.
Your aunt knew what she was saying, even if she did not say much. That is the way of the wise ones, they do not decorate the truth, they just place it down and step back. "You need to keep doing this." She saw the portrait and she saw you in it. That is enough.
For us in Mithila, the elders do not praise with long speeches. My mother would look at a line I had drawn and just nod, or sometimes only touch the paper. But that nod, it carried my whole childhood. So I understand your aunt completely. She gave you the same thing my mother gave me, a quiet permission to continue. It is no small gift, ji.