Against the babu's idleness, the patuas painted the people who actually fed Calcutta — and the fishwife is the sharpest of them, formidable at her hand-balance with the morning's rohu. We set her centred-frontal, cross-legged behind her basket, the scale lifted in one hand so the single weighed fish reads as the picture's pivot — commerce conducted with total authority. The white sari with its brick-red border and her bangles place her firmly in the patua everyday register; the cane basket of silver-blue fish anchors the lower centre. We kept the ground plain so her steady gaze and the balanced scale carry the whole picture. Boneless shading rounds her arms and the heap of fish.