The brief was the nata itself: the long threshold runner Kumaoni women draw down a doorway, read from top to bottom, with footprints leading in and a chowki medallion to rest the eye midway — not a square mandala but a path. We held the fill near half so the geru ground stays open down the central walk and along the margins, the way a freshly smeared doorstep looks before the family crosses it. The two pairs of footprints are Lakshmi's, stepping inward past kalash pots and swastikas toward the lotus-rosette chowki at the heart of the strip; the crowning lotuses top and bottom close the runner. This is the everyday Aipan welcome in its long form — drawn the old way, leading the auspicious in. White biswar on geru, no third colour.