We briefed this as the Sohrai parab itself, the festival the painting tradition is named for, when the lead bull is garlanded and led home to be received at the doorway. A left-to-right frieze was the honest staging — herders and the garlanded bull approaching, the women waiting at the threshold with aarti lamps over a freshly drawn floor aripan — so the whole panel reads as the moment of welcome rather than a static portrait. We kept the cattle large and the cast small, the warm clay ground standing in for the daubed harvest wall, and let the horse, deer and corner peacocks do the framing. It is the literal scene behind every calm Sohrai cattle motif, told once in full.