We briefed this as the cat-with-fish joke in human form: the godman whose raised blessing hand and protected money pot tell two different stories at once. A centred-frontal seat gives him the calm authority of a deity image, but we placed the brass donation pot at front-centre under his resting palm so the contradiction sits in the middle of his serenity. The layered rudraksha malas hung with gem-set lockets are the tell — sanctity worn as jewellery. We kept him in saffron with white tilak stripes and left the ground plain so the blessing and the pot do all the talking. Boneless shading swells his comfortable belly exactly as the patuas swelled their hypocrites.