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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. 🙏

Today one gentleman came to our cooperative stall. He liked one painting, the one with the fish and the lotus, took maybe twenty minutes to decide. Then he said, "This is too much. For folk art? You people enjoy making it. Reduce by half." I reduced by ten percent only, because the colours I used, the handmade paper, the many hours. He was not satisfied but he paid. Then he asked, will I teach his daughter also. I said yes, I teach girls in my village, it is my work and my joy. He said, "Good. Then teach her also, no charge, since you enjoy it so much." As if my enjoyment is the payment. As if the art feeds us on appreciation alone. I said kindly, ji, the enjoyment I have is true, but the rice also must come from somewhere. He looked at me like I had said something rude. I am fifty-six years old and still explaining that my hands are labour and my traditions are worth something. Some days I am tired of teaching this lesson to grown men.

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.

Every time I give in and post the thing I almost didn't, the rough etching proof with the wiped plate mark still on it, the screenprint that misregistered and made this weird ghost double, that's the one that travels. The pieces I actually spend weeks on, the editions I pull clean and sign, they sit there with forty views. I know intellectually the rough stuff reads as "process" and process is what the feed wants. We're all supposed to be celebrating the handmade and the imperfect now. But there's part of me that resists being rewarded for the thing I'd normally throw in the bin. It feels like the medium itself is being flattened into aesthetic, the mess as decoration, and the actual conceptual work I'm doing gets no airtime because it doesn't photograph well. Also I'm aware that saying "my spontaneous casual posts do better" is itself a strategy now, and posting about posting is the most hollow loop there is. I tried leaning into it. Posted a genuinely failed proof, ink disaster on the plate, told the truth about what went wrong. It did numbers. And I felt weirdly used, like I'd sold the accident instead of the labour. Still don't know if the answer is to gamify it deliberately or to refuse and accept the smaller reach. Anyone else caught in that particular trap?

We got a 17th century book of hours in at the studio this week, brought in by a private collector. My job was mostly structural work on the binding, but at one point I had to open it flat to check the gutters, and I just stood there with the weight of it in my hands. The paper was this extraordinary handmade laid stock, still holding its chain lines after four hundred years. Someone wrote marginal notes in pencil on two pages, tiny cramped handwriting, and you wonder what they were thinking while they did it. I worked on it for maybe three hours and I have never been so careful about the weight of my own hands. It made me want to go home and tear up something worthless, honestly. Not in a bad way. Just to remember what paper is for. Anyway, the collector was pleased, which is the part that pays. But the hour of holding it was the part I'll keep.

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.

I have to tell this somewhere. One girl, Sunita, she has been coming to my house since about four months. Fifteen years old, sits very quiet, and for weeks her lines were shaking like anything. Fish would come out like a leaf. I would not scold, only say keep the wrist loose, breathe, the line will come. Today she finished a small fish on handmade paper. Not traced, not copied from my drawing. Her own fish. The eye placed properly, the scales in rows, the tail with that little turn we do. She did it in the old way, single fine line, no pencil first. I have taught many students ji. But when a child's hand suddenly understands something on its own, that is different. I sat looking at that small fish for long time. My mother used to say the fish means fertility, good fortune, the line of the family continuing. Today it felt like that was not only a saying. She asked me if she can come tomorrow also. I said come, and bring your own brush. Some days this work pays nothing and I think why I am doing. Then a day like this comes.

For three months I have been fighting with the black. The soot I make from the lamp is good but it sits too heavy on the paper, it does not behave like the old black my grandmother used to get. She would not tell me her method fully, only laugh and say the tree knows. So this January I pressed a whole branch of pipal leaves under bricks on the roof. My wife thought I have lost my mind, leaves drying in the sun like that. Yesterday I ground them with a little water and the paste came out a deep green-black, and on the handmade paper it dries to a soft charcoal that takes the fine line beautifully. Not shiny, not flat. Like the leaves are still breathing under the line. I have been painting fish all morning with it. The border work especially looks better than anything I did last year with bought ink. My son says I am being sentimental but he is young, he does not understand that the pigment carries the memory of the tree. The line works because the colour has patience in it. Maybe I will press more leaves before the monsoon. The old methods are slow but they do not disappoint.

Today I ground the neem leaves with the stone. My grandmother used to say the paste must rest two nights before you strain it, otherwise the green comes out thin and quarrelsome. Three days this time. The colour that came out is deep, almost black-green, and it sits on the handmade paper different from any tube colour. It has a weight in it. People ask why we do the slow way when the market has everything ready. I tell them the old colours have the season inside them. This neem, it came from the tree behind my sister's house in Darbhanga. The paper is from Saurath, the same mill since my mother's time. Nothing about this painting is in a hurry. The fish and the lotus are done. Now the peacock's tail is waiting and I am letting the colour settle. Some days the work is not about the hand, it is about the patience. I am learning this again every time.

Yesterday a visitor to the cooperative bought one of my smaller fish-and-lotus pieces for ₹1200. Three days of fine line work with the brush, the natural pigment, the handmade paper that I prepare myself. When I counted it out, it came to less than what a plumber charges for a single visit in Patna. I did not bargain. The price was fixed because the cooperative fixed it, and the cooperative fixes it low so that the foreign buyers and the art galleries keep coming back. My mother sold her best work for a sari and a sack of rice when I was a boy. So I should feel fortunate, no? But ji, here is the thing I cannot set aside. The same size piece, once a Delhi dealer resells it, goes for twenty times that and it hangs in a drawing room beside imported furniture. Nobody argues with that price. Only my hand is supposed to be cheap. I am not writing this to shame the young woman who bought it. She was kind and she chose my work. I am writing it because we do not speak of this enough. I have painted since I was eight years old. My fingers know these lines the way my mother's did. And some days I ask myself what my daughter's fingers will find worth doing, if this is the value of three days. I have been thinking of raising my own price for the pieces I sell directly, outside the cooperative. For a larger piece I want to ask ₹6000 and it frightens me to say it aloud. Have any of you fixed your own price after years of accepting what was given?