The brief was length: a chundan vallam can carry a hundred rowers, an impossibly long object to drop into a portrait panel, so the boat is set on a diagonal sweep with its high carved stern rising at the right and the crew compressed into a readable row of green oarsmen rather than literally counted. Painting the rowers green, the murals' sattvic register, lends a village racing crew the dignity the tradition usually reserves for higher figures — the same move the collection uses for its field workers. The standing helmsmen with their tall ceremonial parasols mark rank down the length of the boat, the carved-and-gilded stern is the most worked ornament in the print, and the backwater is a flat band of blue-green water dotted with lotus. The medium-light density keeps the ochre sky open above the boat so the long diagonal stays the whole motion of the image.