The brief was to carry the mehndi-night feeling into Aipan without copying henna's brown paisley: two open palms become mirrored fields, each filled with a lotus medallion and dot-rows the way Aipan fills a chowki, the fingers tipped with pattern bands instead of literal henna. We held the fill near half so the geru ground reads between the hands, with a single lit diya standing in the gap to mark the celebration. In Kumaon the wedding is one of Aipan's great occasions — the floor and threshold are drawn for the rite — so translating the bride's decorated hands into the same white-on-geru line keeps the two crafts in one conversation. The lotus arch, the bangles, and the lower lotus are the auspicious frame; the swastika and kalash between the fingers are the blessing-marks. No second colour, the line doing all of it.