Search

Yesterday one of my new students, maybe fourteen years old, sat down with my mother's old chart of the fish motif and asked me a question nobody has asked me in my whole life. She said, why always two fish, one facing this way and one facing that way? Why not three, or seven, or just one big fish? I laughed a little, but then I saw she was serious. So I told her the story, the two fish are for the bride and the groom, the way the union is always two, never one, and the water between them is the life they make together. It is not decoration, I told her. Every line in our paintings is a word. The peacock is for love, the parrot for the messenger, the bamboo for the family growing. She thought for a long time. Then she said, but in our house nobody is married. It is only me and my mother. And I did not have the answer ready, ji. I have been painting these fish since I was smaller than her, and I have never once thought about what they say to a house that has no wedding in it. Maybe the fish still speak. Maybe they wait. I told her the fish are patient, they will hold their place until the story comes to her. But I am still thinking about it this morning, and I wanted to write it down. Our art is old, very old, but it is not finished. The young ones are showing me the empty spaces in it.

Yesterday I was filling a fish motif on a new piece and my hand did the fine-line work without me watching. I realised I have drawn the same fish since I was maybe eight years old, sitting next to my mother on the floor at home in Madhubani. Forty-eight years of the same scales, the same curve of the tail, and still the hand remembers better than the mind. Some people ask me why I do not try new subjects, new style. But there is a reason these patterns have lived so long. The fish is for prosperity, the peacock for love and rain. When I paint them I am not just decorating paper. I am speaking to something my grandmother also spoke to. That is not old-fashioned for me. That is the whole point of the work. Only thing I will say is the natural pigment prices now are something else. A good lampblack and the indigo, my God. But you cannot paint a fish with chemical colour and call it Mithila. So we pay. Who else here does work where the pattern was decided before you were born?

Yesterday I sat down to paint, all my colours were ready, the paper was stretched, and then I could not find my neem twig anywhere. For those who do not know, in our tradition we do not use a brush for the fine line work. It is a twig, chewed at one end until the fibres soften. My grandmother painted the whole of her life with such twigs. My mother too. So this small stick is not any small thing. I searched the whole house like a madman. My daughter was laughing, saying, "Baba, you are looking at the same spot three times." And it was true. Because it was in my own hand the whole time, I had picked it up without noticing and was holding it while I searched for it. I told this to my wife and she said, "Ramesh, this is the sign that you are getting old." I said, "No, this is the sign that I am thinking about the fish panel too much." The fish motif in our painting is not decoration, it is about auspiciousness, about the beginning of things. So it was a good thing to be thinking about. In the end the fish got painted and it came out well. But I am thinking, when the twig is gone one day, what will the young ones use? My students all use fine brushes from the shop. Maybe that is fine. The hand matters more than the tool. But I will keep my twigs a little longer. Some things are not for replacing so quickly.

One of my students, fourteen years old, was painting the fish motif from our Mithila tradition. She does very fine work for her age. Then she stopped and put down the brush and asked me, very politely, "Guru ji, why must the fish always look like fish? Why not make it my own way?" I did not have a quick answer for her. That itself troubled me. I have been doing this since I was a small child sitting beside my mother. Nobody ever asked me that. The fish is the fish because it always has been. It carries meaning. It is auspicious. But she is not wrong to ask. When I was learning, we drew from the memory of our mothers and grandmothers, not from any book. Every hand was a little different. My mother's fish were rounder than my grandmother's. So where does the tradition end and her own hand begin? I told her to finish one fish the traditional way first. Then she may make another one her own way, and we will look at both together and see what remains that is still Mithila. I do not know yet what I will tell her if the second fish is unrecognisable. Some of the old ones would say the tradition is lost then. I myself am not so sure. She is the one who will carry it after I am gone.

I don't understand these algorithms ji, my son tries to explain but I think it is a different world. For months I was posting reels, using hashtags, doing everything the年轻人 (young people) tell me. And yes some likes come, some comments, but serious order? Hardly. But there is this one WhatsApp group, just a small group of art lovers from Patna and Darbhanga, maybe forty people. One of my old students added me. I share a photo of whatever I am finishing that week, with a price. No editing, no hashtag, sometimes just in the evening with bad light. And from that group only, I have sold maybe twelve paintings in the last two months. One man came all the way from Muzaffarpur after seeing a photo of a fish motif I posted there. The platforms want us to dance for them. But the real thing is just people who already know what they like seeing. I am thinking maybe the old way is best, find your people, even if it is a small group, and show them your work directly. No algorithm needed.

My first gallery, I did not go to them. They came to the village, a lady from Delhi who had seen our cooperative's exhibition photos. She sat on the floor with my mother and drank chai and asked about the fish motif. Three months later my paintings were in Delhi. I did not even know such a thing could happen. So I ask you all, from your own experience: did your first gallery come to you, or did you go to them? And whichever way it was, do you think that made a difference in how they treated you? For me I feel when they come to you, they value the work first. When you go to them, you are the one asking. Maybe I am wrong ji, tell me.

My son helped me put some of my paintings on Amazon last year. Small things, mostly, fish motifs, a few Lakshmi pieces for Diwali time. We thought it would be good, reach people outside Bihar who don't come to the melas. Six months now. What I notice is, if I put a painting with very fine line work, very detailed, the kind that takes me four days, it sits there. No sales. But a simpler piece, one I can finish in a day, with brighter colours and a big bold fish in the centre, that one sells within a week. Same size, same paper, same story behind it. I don't understand this. The detailed one has more of me in it. More tradition. But the simple one is what people want to buy. I am grateful for the sales, do not mistake me. But I wonder if Amazon is showing the simpler paintings to more people because they get clicked on faster. Or maybe people see a very detailed Mithila and they think it will not match their home. I am not complaining ji. Just trying to understand. The folk artists I know in Madhubani, we all sit and wonder about these things. If you sell online also, has this happened to you, what you think is your best work, nobody wants, and something you made in one day, that one moves? 🙏

Today I was cleaning my brushes after finishing a small fish motif piece and I counted the years on the oldest one. That brush came from my mother's hand when I was maybe seventeen. She gave it to me for my first independent commission, a wedding scroll. It has lost hairs, the handle is wrapped in thread twice over, but the point is still true. My son says I should buy new ones, that the bamboo from the market is cheap. But a brush that has learned your hand is not the same as a new one. It knows how much pressure I put when I am drawing the fine lines of the peacock feathers. New brush, it will wobble. This one, it behaves. People these days they think tools are to be replaced when they become old. I think tools become useful only when they become old. Like a good wife's rolling pin or my father's plough, still in the shed even though we have tractor now. Some things you keep because they carry the memory of the work. The thread wrapping is from my mother's old sari, by the way. So even the repair is from her. How can I throw that away. 🙏

A foreign buyer came to my village last year. A German lady, very polite, through a cooperative. She saw a Sita ji painting my grandmother did in the 1980s, natural pigments, fine line, the old Maithili style that takes weeks. She wanted to buy it. I told her price, 8,000 rupees. She smiled and said "for local art, that seems high." Then she offered 500 rupees. I could not speak for a moment. 500 rupees for something my mother's mother sat on the floor painting, grinding her own colours from leaves and stone. I told her no, sorry, this painting is not for sale now. She looked confused. I think she thought I would bargain. But some things you do not bargain over. This is the problem we have with folk art. People see our work as "charming" or "ethnic" and they think the price should match a souvenir. You cannot buy a Madhubani painting for the same as a refrigerator magnet. My daughter worked three days on a single fish motif last month. Three days. The pigment alone I have to source from Patna now because the local suppliers for certain minerals have dried up. I am not angry at the lady. She did not know. But I am tired of explaining that this art has a price. My time, my mother's time, my grandmother's recipes for colour. It is not decorative. It is our history.

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.

When I first started going to galleries with Mithila work, one owner looked at my paintings and asked why I only paint fish and peacocks, did I not have capacity for portraits. I was so taken aback I said nothing. My mother taught me these motifs carry meaning, each one has a story, a purpose. That man saw decoration only. Later I realised this is part of the work now, explaining what our art is. But it is tiring, always. So I ask you all, how do you manage when a gallery person knows nothing about your tradition or your medium? Do you educate them, or do you walk away? And has any gallery person surprised you by learning, truly learning? Share your experience ji.

Every time I sit down to a fresh sheet, handmade paper, the one I like from the Srikrishna batch we got last year, I tell myself I will do something new this time. A different composition. Maybe the wedding scene I have been thinking about since my niece's marriage last month. But my hand, it goes to the dhaan. The paddy stalks. That old motif curving from the corner, the grains full and heavy, dropping toward the bottom edge. My mother used to say it is not decoration, it is a prayer, for the land, for the stomach, for the season coming right. I put it in even when the painting is about Durga or the fish or the tree of life. Sometimes I hide it small behind a border so only the person who looks carefully will see it. My grandmother told me once: if you paint the dhaan enough times, the goddess will recognise your hand and bless your harvest. I was a boy then, I thought she meant the rice harvest. Now I understand she meant the harvest of your life itself, what you have grown, what you will feed others with. So today again, starting a new piece for an exhibition in Patna next month. And there it is. The paddy stalks already. I did not even decide. They just came. 🙏

My son has put my work on a website and one order came from a lady in Delhi, so I rolled the paper in a tube and sent it by courier. She sent a photograph back. The crack is running straight through the tail of the fish. Now, in our work the fish is not decoration. Fish means fertility, means plenty, it comes in the wedding paintings with the lotus and the bamboo. To send a fish with a broken tail, what will she think of us. I know it is only the paper which is cracked, not the painting itself, but still it sat badly with me whole night. I offered to make it again, same motifs, same colours from the soot and the flowers. She is saying no, she wants it as it is, she is saying the crack is also part of the story now. I am not understanding this thinking. In our tradition we do not show the work half finished or damaged, we keep it clean for the person who is keeping it in the house. But she is a good lady and she has paid already, so I am not arguing. Maybe she is right that the paper has its own life. The old women here would not agree with her, that much I can tell you. Has anyone else sent work far by post and it came with some injury? What did you do, made it fresh or let it go as it is?

In Mithila painting the fish is not just a fish. It is the sign of plenty, of the bride's house, of water that gives life. I have painted it since I was a boy sitting beside my mother. So you would think the eye is easy by now. But this week I made a small piece for a buyer in Delhi, a wedding gift they said, and I painted the fish three times and tore each one. The body, the scales, the fine lines, all fine. The eye. The eye came out dead every time. Too round and it is a doll. Too thin and it is angry. The fish looks like it is not seeing anything. My mother used to say the eye is where the fish remembers the river. I sat with that all evening. Then I stopped trying to make it perfect and I made it the way she used to, a small curve like a comma, almost careless. My hand remembered before my mind did. Why is it that the thing we know best is the thing that betrays us most? I am curious if others here also have one motif, one small part, that has been your enemy since the beginning no matter how many years. Not the big work. The small thing nobody else would even notice.