The brief was to bring Pattachitra's two favourite ideas together — the tree of life and the flute-playing Krishna — in one calm, symmetrical image. So we set a single fruiting kadamba at the centre, stood blue Krishna at its base playing his flute, and arranged three gopis among the upper branches reaching for the round haritala fruit, the way the tree of life holds creatures in its canopy. At the roots we folded two conch-white cows and stood two green peacocks, so the music gathers the whole creation from canopy to ground. We kept the geru ground open and refused a crowded grove; the single tree and the single flute carry the scene. It is Krishna-leela read through the tree-of-life, in the Odisha line.