One Minute of Quiet

Dev holds the recorder above a tray of bread. He wants the crackle of fresh crust for the youth radio programme. Instead, his headphones fill with a van reversing, two people arguing about parking and someone calling the price of tomatoes. He lowers the microphone. “I need one minute of quiet.” Nessa looks round the busy market. “You’ve picked an interesting place to find it.”

They move behind the bread stall, where Mr Tang is cutting a loaf. Dev asks him to cut another slice. Mr Tang does, slowly, but a metal trolley rattles past just as the knife reaches the board. Dev stops the recording. He has promised a piece about the market waking up, and so far he has twelve seconds of useful sound. Their bus leaves in an hour.

Nessa suggests recording the trolley too. “We could use the things that keep getting in your way.” Dev shakes his head. In his plan, the listener hears bread, then birds, then a soft greeting. He has written every link between the sounds. “It’s meant to feel peaceful.” “Does it?” Nessa asks. A trader drops a stack of empty boxes behind them. Dev takes off his headphones.

They sit on a bench to listen to what they have. Beneath the trolley’s clatter, Mr Tang says, “Careful, that wheel sticks.” Then someone laughs and offers to help. Dev plays it again. He had been so busy waiting for the bread sound that he had missed the voices. Nessa taps his notebook. “There’s your market waking up. It’s just louder than you thought.”

Dev crosses out the first link. They ask the trolley owner whether they can use her voice in the programme, explaining where it will be heard. She agrees, and Mr Tang agrees too. A customer nearby prefers not to be recorded, so they wait until she leaves before making another take. This time Dev asks Mr Tang what he enjoys about starting early on a Saturday.

“Before the rush, you can hear the swallows under that roof,” Mr Tang says. He points across the square. Dev and Nessa walk to the covered arcade. There is a brief gap in the traffic, and the birds chatter overhead. Dev keeps still until the sound fades. Then a bus sighs at the stop. He leaves the recorder running. Nessa raises her eyebrows, and he gives a small shrug.

At the radio room, they arrange the clips. Bread, trolley, voices, birds, bus. Dev makes a rough edit, joining the sounds without pretending they happened at the same moment. Nessa reads the short introduction. When they listen through, the sudden clatter nearly buries her last word. Dev lowers that clip and leaves a tiny pause before Mr Tang speaks. Now the joke has room to land.

The programme goes out on Monday. Dev waits for someone to mention the birds, which took the longest to record. Instead, a listener writes that the trolley reminded her of helping her father at his stall. Another asks where Mr Tang sells his bread. Nessa reads the messages aloud. “Nobody’s complained about the lack of peace.” Dev folds his original plan into a small paper fan.

Next Saturday, they take a copy of the piece to Mr Tang. He listens while arranging his loaves, smiling when the stuck wheel rattles through the headphones. “That’s us,” he says. Dev buys two rolls. Behind him, a trolley squeaks, a trader calls hello and the swallows start up beneath the roof. He reaches for the recorder, then stops. For a minute, he just listens.