The brief was to catch Phooldei as a doorway scene rather than a portrait: two children flanking a flower-decked threshold, the year's first blossoms strung across the door and scattered on the step, with the footprints and flower bowl that tie it to the Aipan welcome. We held the fill near half so the geru ground reads around the figures and across the lower field, the way a doorstep looks the morning the children come. Phooldei — Phool Sankranti, the start of the Kumaoni spring month of Chaitra — is when children go door to door scattering the first flowers on each threshold and are given sweets, jaggery, and coins in return; the doorway, the petals, and the children are the whole festival. The lotuses, swastikas, and footprints are the everyday Aipan blessing-marks holding the scene. White biswar on geru, no second colour.