The brief was to hold an open Sankranti sky on a closed two-tone page: kite-flyers on a terrace, the kites up with their strings crossing, birds and little suns scattered into the geru, and a hill skyline kept to a thin line so the air still reads as air. We held the fill near half so the sky and the terrace floor breathe around the figures, and let the kites read as lozenges with dotted tails rather than coloured paper. The pillared arch, the lotus floor mandala, and the corner diyas seat the rooftop inside the Aipan frame, the way a festival drawing keeps its borders. Drawn the old way, white biswar on geru, it keeps a high-spirited kite day inside the calm two-tone grammar.