The brief was a true ashtadal: one eight-petal lotus, one ring, and room to breathe — not an onion of nested mandalas. The petals open from a single dotted bindu at the centre, and between each pair we set the small motifs a Diwali Lakshmi diagram actually carries: a standing lamp here, a spiralled conch there, alternating around the circle like offerings laid down for the goddess. We held the fill to roughly half so the geru ground reads as open earth around the medallion, the way a freshly smeared courtyard does before the lamps are lit. The radial symmetry is the rite's own — Lakshmi is seated on the lotus, so the lotus is drawn to seat her. White biswar on geru, nothing else.