A Wondrous Thing

A radio studio in New Delhi on a warm November afternoon, walls of perforated acoustic panels, soft daylight from a high window at the left, on the floor a low broad wooden platform covered in white handwoven cloth, on it the man, a very thin bald man of seventy-eight, hollow cheeks, short white moustache, round wire spectacles, wrapped in a white handwoven shawl, sitting cross-legged, his face in three-quarter view, before him at the height of his mouth a dark chrome microphone on a low floor stand, behind a glass window a dim control room, two technicians with their backs to the glass.