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Last year in Madhubani, marriage season was coming and a family from Darbhanga came to me. They wanted a large Mithila piece for the wedding wall, traditional, with the sun and moon, the fish, the bridal procession. I told them ₹8,000 for the whole thing, handmade paper, natural colours from my own stock, ten days' work minimum. They said they would think about it. Next week I heard they went to a younger fellow in the next lane. He does the work too, learned from his aunt, but he charges ₹4,000. He uses poster colour, not geru and rice paste. And the paper is machine-made. But it is half my price, so they went to him. I am not angry at the boy. He is feeding his family. But this is the thing, when your own neighbour will do it for half, the customer does not see the difference between handmade pigment and a tube from the market. They see two paintings that look somewhat same, and they pick the cheap one. My son tells me I should raise my prices even more, because the people who understand the difference will pay. But the people who understand the difference are fewer every year. The ones coming to buy are often new money, wanting a "Mithila painting" to hang on the wall like a thing, not knowing what they are looking at. So I am stuck. ₹8,000 is already not much when you count the grinding of the colours, the preparation of the paper, the days of sitting. But I cannot compete with ₹4,000 and poster colour. And I don't want to compete that way either. How do you hold a price for the real thing when the market does not know what real means anymore?

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. 🙏

Myself Ramesh, I am finding the colours are shifting so beautifully now. The geru mitti, which is red earth, it becomes like a warm orange when the sun hits it directly on the handmade paper. And the deep green from the neem leaves, it gets a touch of blue. It is a different light in the studio these days, a softer light. The peacocks are looking especially vibrant this afternoon. It makes me feel grateful for this process, ji.

One of my bigger pieces, a marriage scene with the fish and the mango tree, went to a buyer in Delhi for ₹7,000. That sounds respectable until you sit and count the days. Preparation of the paper, grinding the colours, the fine line work, then the filling. I worked maybe four hours each day for nine days. That is thirty-six hours. Seven thousand divided by thirty-six comes to about ₹194 an hour. And that is before the cost of the handmade paper and the natural pigments, which are not cheap since the good sources became difficult. My mother used to say we must never sell a painting for less than the soul it carries. But the soul does not pay for the grandson's school books. I have been keeping this art alive my whole life and still I cannot name a fair price for it. When a cooperative takes a cut and the buyer haggles, I am left asking myself if my grandmother's line work is worth less than a plumber's visit. I raised my price to ₹8,500 this month. I am scared to go higher because the buyers are not many. But I have decided the art will not answer to the shame of being cheap any longer. If it sells, good. If not, the painting stays with me in the house where it was made, and that is also something.

Myself Ramesh, I was finishing a large piece for a client in Delhi. It depicted the marriage of Shiva and Parvati, very detailed work with natural colours on handmade paper. For weeks, my eyes were glued to the fine lines, the tiny figures. When it was done, the client asked for the final price. I calculated everything – the cost of the paper, the pigments which are becoming costly now, my time spent over many days and nights. When I told him the figure, my own hands started to shake a little. It was a good price, a fair price for the work, but still, it felt very high for me. We are not used to such figures in Madhubani, you see. He paid without any question, thankfully. But I am still thinking about it.

There is a girl from our village, maybe eighteen years now. I taught her when she was small, maybe ten, how to hold the brush, how to mix the rice paste for the base, the meaning of the fish and the lotus. She would sit on the floor with me and her lines were shaky, very much so, but she had patience. Last week her father brought me one of her new pieces. A Sita in the forest, done on handmade paper, all natural colours, the indigo she made herself from the leaves. And I tell you honestly, the linework stopped me. Clean as anything my mother ever did. The detail in the leaves, the border pattern she invented herself, not from the book. I sat with it for a long time. I felt first pride, then a small strange other thing. Not jealousy exactly. But something that sat in my chest heavy. She has surpassed me. At her age I was still copying, still learning. She is already making. I told her father she should apply for the state craft fellowship. He said what will she do with a fellowship, she will marry next year. I said nothing then. But I am thinking what to say. It is her hands. They should not stop now.