India: A Million Mutinies Now - pg. 180

We had to walk carefully, picking our way over broken or unmade footpaths. Level or fully made footpaths are not a general Indian need, and the Indian city road is often like a wavering, bumpy, much mended asphalt path between drifts of dust and dirt and the things that get dumped on Indian city roads and then stay there, things like sand, gravel, wet rubbish, dry rubbish: nothing ever looking finished, no kerbstone, no wall, everything in a half-and-half way, half-way, to being or ceasing to be.