The brief was a banquet without the clutter: a sadya is dozens of small dishes, and rendered as texture it would turn to mush. So the long green banana leaf became the organising band of the whole panel, and the food was drawn as flat, readable mounds — ochre rice, red pickles, white and yellow curries, papad, laid in the two rows a real leaf carries — rather than as fussy detail. The family sits behind the leaf in a calm frieze, one man already coming round with a serving pot and ladle, so the eye reads people first, then feast. A brass nilavilakku, clay pots and a bunch of bananas stand to the side, a small pookalam sits in the foreground to tie it to Onam without repeating the flower-carpet print, and the medium-light density keeps the brown-ochre ground breathing behind the palms and temple roof. No plates, no cutlery — leaf and hand, the way it is done.