DESIGN BRIEF: the subject was a modern institution — the school midday meal — and the aim was to give it the warmth of folk domestic life rather than the look of a scheme. We made the cooking the heart: women around a great black pot steaming under a leafy tree, a child fetching a bowl, a tall stack of steel plates and a well beside them. The defining image follows below — two long rows of seated children holding bowls to be served — drawn as repeating folk figures so the scale reads without crowding. At medium-light density the kitchen holds the centre and a bus and tractor settle along the base in the same flat line. Among the Rathwa of Chhota Udepur the communal cooking pot is an old village sight; the midday meal simply gives it a new occasion, and the bus that brought the children waits at the edge.