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Myself Ramesh. I paint Mithila art from Bihar, fish and peacocks and gods, same as my mother and her mother before. This is our tradition, many centuries old. Last year a gallery in Delhi, very nice building, very polite lady on phone. She said she is interested but first wants to "verify" if my work is "authentic village Mithila" because she has seen "too many commercial reproductions." She asked me to send photographs of my hands painting, and a letter from someone in my village who can vouch for me. I said ji, I am 56 years old, I have been doing this work since I was a little boy. My mother learned from her mother. You can see the natural pigment, the line work. But she insisted. So I sent. Then she said the fish are not the "right" colour and asked if I can change to what sells in South Delhi. I said no, this is Mithila fish, this is how we do. She stopped replying. Any of you had a gallery ask you to prove your own tradition? Or tell you your own art is not "authentic" enough? What do you even do with that.

She came to my home, sat on the mat, looked at my mother's old painting of Laxmi on the wall and said, "Ramesh ji, can you make her face a little more... you know, like contemporary? Like Deepika or someone." I said, Mata Laxmi? Like Deepika Padukone? She said yes, why not, we have to keep up with the times. I told her I have been painting Laxmi since I was a boy. In Mithila, the goddess has a certain face. The lotus, the elephants, the gold coins falling from her hand, the proportions of these also are fixed by tradition. You cannot just give her a film star nose and call it Madhubani. She said okay but can you at least make the eyes bigger and more modern. I took the order anyway because my daughter's school fees were due. I painted it the way it should be. She came to collect it and said it looks very traditional only. Took it but I could see she was not happy. My wife said, next time, make her wear sunglasses also.

Myself Ramesh. I paint Mithila, as my mother and her mother taught me. Natural colours only, turmeric yellow, indigo blue, vermilion, so on. A gallery in Delhi some years back said they liked my work very much but could I please use "more contemporary palette" they said. I was confused ji. These colours are the tradition. They carry meaning. I cannot change simply because somebody wants something else. I said no. And they moved on. Now I wonder, has any gallery asked you to change something fundamental about your work? The colours, the subject, the size, the medium. And did you do it, or did you hold your ground? I am curious to know. 🙏

One gallery in Delhi, they told me, "Can you make the colours less bright? The international buyers like it more muted." I said ji, these colours are our tradition, the red and yellow are for the goddess, I cannot dim them. They did not take my work. I was not sorry. Has any gallery asked you to change something that felt wrong to change? Not just a small thing, something that changes the work itself. Did you say no? Do you ever regret it?

Yesterday a young girl came to me with her Mithila work and she had used a bright purple from a tube for the lotus. She was so proud, and the drawing was good, her lines were clean. But I had to tell her no, this is not our colour. She looked at me like I had scolded her for nothing. I tried to explain. In our tradition, we do not have purple. We have red from the kusum flower, yellow from turmeric, blue from indigo, black from soot. The lotus is red or pink or sometimes white, but not this purple. She said but it looks nice, and she was right, it did look nice. But it is not Mithila. This is the thing that troubles me these days. I am not against new things. When I was young I also wanted to try new colours. But the old way, it has a reason. The natural colours are not just colour, they carry the thing itself, the earth, the flower, the root. When you use a purple from a tube, you lose that connection. The painting becomes decoration only, not ritual. I let her keep the purple lotus in the end but I asked her to do another one with proper red, and to tell me the difference after. She is young, maybe twelve. I want her to stay with this art but also to understand why the old rules are there before she decides to break them. Sometimes I feel like a strict grandfather when I say these things. But this is our heritage, not just any painting.

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?

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? 🙏

You know, in our tradition, when we paint the wedding scene, the bride and groom, the mandap, the procession, we always include the musicians. Dholak, shehnai, sometimes a harmonium. It is part of the story. It is how you know there is celebration happening. Last week I was working on a piece for a young couple from Darbhanga. Big order, they wanted the full wedding narrative around the border. So I am painting, I am painting, all the figures are coming nicely, the bride under her veil, the groom with his sehra, the women carrying diyas. Then I finish and I look and I realise: nobody is playing the dholak. There is a gap in the procession where the drummer should be. I forgot him completely. My wife looked at it and said "Where is the music, Ramesh ji?" I had to take a fresh paper and start that section again. Thirty years of this work and still I am leaving out the drummer. This is what I am thinking today: that the old stories, they have their own order. If the dholak player is missing, the wedding is not complete. You cannot skip him just because you are in a hurry or you forget. The painting will know.🙂