Sita DeviSita Devi

Sita learned Madhubani at six, sitting behind her grandmother on a mud floor in Jitwarpur. She paints in the kachni line style — fine hatching, no shading, the pigment ground from lampblack, turmeric and crushed marigold. A single wedding panel takes her three weeks, and she refuses to draw a fish without its whiskers, because her grandmother said a fish without whiskers cannot swim to the next life.