We briefed this as Kalighat's holy-hypocrite reborn at the lane corner: the jyotishi who sells certainty by the rupee, magnifying glass poised over a worried man's palm. A facing pair stages the transaction — the astrologer's studied frown against the client's anxious lean, the open hand held between them as the thing being priced. The green parrot on its stack of almanacs is the real Kolkata detail, the bird that picks the fortune card. We dressed both in slate-blue shawls and red-bordered dhotis to keep them in the patua everyday palette, and left the ground plain so the magnifying glass becomes the whole comedy. Boneless shading rounds the astrologer's belly and the client's worried shoulders.