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Went back to my old street this morning because I heard they'd started demolition. The house we lived in till I was eighteen is gone already, just a pile of brick and those stupidly bright pink plaster chunks. But the last house at the end, the one with the bougainvillea that always looked like it was on fire, that one's still standing. The family came out and asked what I was doing, and I told them I used to live here. The woman offered me chai and I sat on their steps for an hour sketching the facade across the road. My own childhood home, and I'm drawing it from someone else's porch. The really strange part is how much I remembered wrong. The balcony I was so sure faced the main road, it faces the side lane. The window I thought was mine, wasn't even in our flat. I've been carrying this wrong mental map around for sixteen years and nobody ever corrected it because nobody ever asked. I keep painting these old houses as if I'm documenting them properly, but I can't even remember my own correctly. Maybe that's what the whole project actually is. A record of how unreliable I am. Anyway the chai was good. That house has maybe two weeks left.

So I finally worked up the nerve to paint my grandmother's childhood home, the one she grew up in, in a little town near Mangalore. She's told me about it so many times. The jackfruit tree in the back, the veranda where her mother used to grind spices, the red oxide floors. I've never seen it myself, it got sold decades ago, but I pieced it together from her stories and old photos my aunt had. Finished it last week and showed her yesterday. And she just looked at it for a long time and said "which house is this?" I explained, and she went quiet. Then she said "no, that's not how it was at all" and started describing it again, the windows were different, the roof was lower, the jackfruit tree was on the other side actually. I sat there with my painting that was completely wrong and felt like such an idiot. But then later she called me and said to come over this weekend, she wants to sit with me and draw it properly together. She said "I'll tell you where every brick goes, you put it down." I don't know if the painting will be better the second time, but I think this is actually a win. Just not the kind you frame right away.

Since I was a small boy I am drawing the fish from the left border, the one that carries the boat in the Saptami story. My mother taught me the kachni line for the scales, one breath, no lifting the brush. Now I sit down with a fresh sheet of Sajji paper and my hand stops at the tail. It comes out stiff. The line is correct but the fish has no life, no swimming. I thought it was age, my eyes, but yesterday my granddaughter watched me and said, "Dada, why you are drawing so slowly?" And I had no answer for her. I am wondering if it is the show I did last month in Patna, where they wanted my fish bigger and my colours brighter for the city wall. Or maybe when you paint for money only, something closes inside. Has anyone else felt the hand forget a thing it has done since childhood? Not the skill, that is there, but the sureness. How do you get back the sureness?

I did one of those old Bangalore bungalow portraits for a family that's selling the place. They wanted it as a keepsake before the demolition. I quoted ₹6,000, felt generous about it, honestly, because it was for someone who was losing their childhood home and I wanted to be nice. Eleven hours. That's ₹545 an hour before the paper and the paints, which for good watercolour paper and decent pigment is maybe another ₹800-1000. So call it ₹480 an hour. And I know the family was happy, and I know some of you will say stop undervaluing yourself, and I know all of that is true. But the thing is, I also know if I'd quoted ₹15,000 they'd have found someone else, or gone to one of those digital artists on Instagram who does it for ₹2,000. There's this whole tier of people who genuinely cannot tell my work from the cheap version, and that's the part I don't have a fix for. Still, I did the math on a napkin after I delivered it and sat there for a full minute. I don't even know what the answer is. I just wanted it written down somewhere.

I got a pair of sewing scissors that belonged to my grandmother, she carried them in her apron pocket my whole childhood and I'd watch her snip thread and cut fabric and trim little corners off pieced blocks, never setting them down, just keeping them right there at her hip like they was part of her. She passed in '84 and I got those scissors and honey they are dull as all get out and I don't care one bit. I could get them sharpened, I know I could. But it feels wrong somehow, like I'd be erasing the wear she put in them. Every little nick and gap in the blade is from her hand. My daughter bought me a nice new pair for Christmas two years ago and they sit in the drawer. I use them when I have to. But when I'm really working, when I'm piecing something that feels like it matters, I reach for Mamie's scissors every time. They pull at the fabric more than they cut it sometimes. And that's alright with me. Anybody else got a tool they keep using past when they should? Or am I just being sentimental?

So I had this conversation with a gallery owner last week. Small place, mostly sells to people who want "art that goes with the sofa" kind of thing. She was genuinely interested in my work, wanted to take a few pieces on consignment. But she kept pushing me to price them higher than I wanted, not in a greedy way, more like she thought I was undervaluing myself. And I couldn't explain it properly to her. It's not that I think my work is worthless. It's that I paint these old Bangalore houses that are being torn down, and I know the people who used to live in them. Some of them still come and watch me draw. So when I put a price on it, it feels like I'm putting a price on someone's childhood, you know? She said "then don't sell them, just show them." But I do need to sell. I just don't want to pretend it's the same as selling a print of a nice landscape. Anyway, I priced them lower than she wanted and she took three. Two sold in a week. Which I don't know if that proves anything or nothing.

Had a client last month, wanted a watercolour of her childhood home in Malleswaram, the one that got sold and is probably going to become an apartment building soon. She was lovely, genuinely emotional about it. But she wanted a detailed breakup of costs before confirming. Paper, paint, framing, my time. Itemised. I sat down and did it properly. Paper is Arches, 300gsm, cold press, a full sheet costs about ₹1,200 now. Paints, I use Artists' quality, and honestly a single tube lasts ages so allocating cost per painting is a joke. Framing with archival mount and UV glass runs around ₹2,500-3,000 here. And then I put down my time at what I thought was a modest ₹500 an hour. Came to about ₹8,000 for the whole thing. She looked at it and said "that's a lot for a painting." And I just sat there thinking, ma'am, I gave you the honest breakdown you asked for. ₹500 an hour is less than what I made as a junior architect ten years ago. The materials alone plus framing eat up almost half of it. And this is me not even charging for the reference photo walk I did, the three rounds of approval sketches, the time I spent staring at your old family photos to get the bougainvillea colour right. I didn't say any of that. I just smiled and said I could adjust the framing to something simpler. She agreed. The painting came out nice. But I keep thinking about how the moment you show someone the actual math, it suddenly feels too much, even when the math is already lowballing yourself.

Okay so I have this round sable brush, size 6, I've had it since like second year of uni and the handle is literally cracked all the way down the middle and held together with washi tape. The ferrule is loose. It wobbles. Anyone else would have tossed it years ago but it holds a point sharper than anything I've bought since and I'm convinced it absorbed some kind of magic from all the paintings it's been through. I tried to replace it twice, bought two very expensive "upgrades," both are sitting in the cup collecting dust because they just don't behave the same. My partner thinks I'm insane. They offered to buy me a matching new set for my birthday and I had to gently explain that would be like replacing a childhood dog with a similar-looking dog and expecting no one to notice. Anyway I spent the morning painting a pear and the brush is fine, the pear is fine, the washi tape is doing its job. Just needed to say it out loud to people who might understand instead of my mother who asked if I could just "use a different one" like it's that simple. 😭 Do you have a brush (or pencil, or palette knife, anything) that you'd defend to the death?

Started a new piece this morning. Torn paper, charcoal, and I had this idea about a house I barely remember from childhood. You know, the kind where you can picture the front door but not the windows. Two hours in and I'm staring at this orange painter's tape I used to block out a section, and it's not coming off without pulling up half the paper. I know this. I knew this before I put it down. Every single time. I keep a roll of that cheap masking tape for exactly this and I still grabbed the orange one because it was closer. So now the composition has a permanent orange stripe that's going to peek through the charcoal no matter what I do. Either I lean into it or I scrap the whole thing. Leaning in seems less wasteful. The house doesn't matter anymore anyway. The tape is the piece now. That's usually how it goes. My best stuff is never the thing I sat down to make.

Started a new quilt today and I'm doing something I ain't never done before. Cutting up my own grandmother's housedresses. She wore these pinks and greens every day of my childhood, and they hung in a cedar chest for forty years after she passed. My daughter kept them, bless her. Today I finally took the scissors to them. Lord, honey. Every stitch on those seams was hers. You can feel a woman in the cloth she wore, I swear you can. I had to stop twice and just breathe. But that's the whole point of this work, isn't it. We don't bury our people, we keep on wearing them. Working on it at my kitchen table, ironing board set up to my left, a whole mess of scraps everywhere. I'll show y'all when it comes together. Might take me a while. Some pieces you can't rush.

Myself Ramesh, doing Mithila painting since childhood in Madhubani. For many years I thought galleries are only for the big city artists, not for village people like us. But one day a small gallery in Patna, they saw my work at a craft mela and said bring your paintings to us. I was nervous ji, I went with my son carrying maybe ten pieces rolled in cloth. The owner sat with me, asked about the meaning of the fish and the peacocks, offered me tea. He sold two pieces in the first month and I thought I am dreaming. That was maybe fifteen years ago. Now I have worked with many galleries but that first one, I still remember the feeling of being treated like a real artist and not just a craftsman. What about you? Tell me your first gallery story, the one that made you feel seen, or maybe the one that did not.