He breakfasts on newspapers, scooping up the contents of magazines on the side the way other people devour their cereal. Nik Gowing, BBC World presenter, is ostensibly here to cover the freedom-at-midnight hoopla. But the man who's been with ITN for 17 years, where he was diplomatic editor for the Channel 4 News, already has two novels behind him "" one on Poland, the second on the new mafia in post-communist Russia. He could perhaps find material for a third in India.
This is actually Gowing's second coming. 'The first visit was in May 1996 during the general elections,' he says. 'India is certainly a vibrant country. It's always difficult to broadcast programmes from India for India, because people here are very aware of the happenings around them.'
That doesn't prevent the BBC and Gowing from trying, though. The Freedom Fifty series is slated to reach a crescendo with the live telecast of the special session of Parliament at midnight. The BBC has spent £100,000 on just those two days of coverage alone!
Gowing's previous assignments have seen him shuttle from one war zone into another. In 1981, he received a BAFTA award for his exclusive on martial law in Poland; eight years later he broke the story of the Russian pull-out from Afghanistan. But two stories out of his scrapbook grab the attention. The first was when Gowing and Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadjic faced off in a meeting which led to ITN's award-winning discovery of the death and detention camps at Omarska and Trnopolje in 1992. Three years later, Gowing spent five months of painstaking investigation before discovering that, despite denials to the contrary, the US military had secretly helped drop weapons to Bosnian government forces in Tuzla.
Covering India's 50th birthday bash is still a challenge for him, though. 'It's a tremendous task as we are also broadcasting to Indians and Pakistanis who already are aware of the state of affairs. The idea is to be slightly mischievous, slightly provocative, but yet informative without being patronising,' says Gowing. It's a tall order, but it might just be enough to have the 6-foot Gowing coming back for more.