The brief was a still life where a mural wants a figure: the Vishu kani is an arrangement, not a person, so the brass uruli heaped with fruit and crowned by a great spray of golden konna blossom is made the bright centre of the panel, the lit nilavilakku rising beside it and the round mirror behind, exactly as the kani is laid the night before. A green-bodied Krishna icon presides at the left as the kani's deity, women stand to the right, and in the foreground a boy kneels with his eyes just opening to the sight — the heart of the ritual, the auspicious kani that should be the first thing seen on Vishu morning, the Malayalam new year. The golden konna is the single most worked colour-mass in the print, as it is the flower of the festival, and the medium-light density keeps the ochre ground open so the arrangement, not the surroundings, holds the eye.