The brief was to hold a whole procession inside one ritual oval rather than spreading it across the field: the goddess centred and frontal in her flagged palanquin, four bearers at the poles, and a band of drummers and horn-players ranged below in folk silhouette. We kept the fill near half so the geru ground reads inside the oval and between the figures, the way an Aipan diagram leaves earth open. The Nanda Devi Mela is one of Kumaon's and Garhwal's great festivals — the mountain goddess Nanda is carried in her doli through town with music, the year's biggest fair gathering around her — so the doli, the bearers, and the dhol-dancers are the festival in shorthand. Swastikas at the four points and lotus corners are the everyday Aipan blessing-marks that turn a scene into a diagram. White biswar on geru, no second colour.