Fascinating! Wonderful to hear the artist's perspective of his painting and compare our own interpretation of it. I had quite a different take on the postures of the two figures. The laborer is from the village and would probably be living in small huts with his family. There might not be any furniture at home, so sitting down cross legged in the typical villager style would be the norm. We see this on the streets of Mumbai and also when we visit villages. The man from the city on the other hand might not be used to sitting down, indeed, he doesn't admit the cross legged seating posture that most of us would when sitting down. He's even wearing a lungi, which kind of suggests that he lives near by to the construction site or could be the supervisor... he's sitting down awkwardly, in order to write the letter. The other unspoken aspect of this painting is the fact that the letter's contents would be read not just by the literate man helping the laborer, but also the postman back home who would help the laborer's family by reading it aloud to them. There's no sense of privacy or intimacy. It's literally out in the open, in the street. The viewer is not just us, but the entire city peeping. It's quite metaphorical.