The brief was the Pushkar camel fair — one of the great Rajasthan gatherings — given the colour and bustle of an old durbar without dissolving into a fairground scrum. Marwar grammar fits naturally: the decorated camels stand in profile rows exactly the way royal mounts were once paraded, so the fair becomes a kind of cavalcade. We staged it as a frieze across a dusty-saffron ground, with bargaining traders, women carrying brass pots and a balloon-seller giving everyday human scale, and let only a few modern notes in — a snack cart, the balloons, a small Ferris wheel — kept flat and folk-stylised so the picture reads as a Marwar fair-day painting first and a modern mela second. The low golden sun and tent flags hold the whole spread together at the magic hour the fair is famous for.