India: A Million Mutinies Now
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 were looking finished, no curbstone, no wall, everything in a half-and half way, half way to being or ceasing to be.
This was in 1990, India through the eyes of Naipaul. Not much has changed 20 years later. Those words can be used as is, for current description of those same roads. Same wretchedness, same intermingling of roads to sidewalks and curbs, same undefined segregation of people to rubbish, same unfinishedness to urban scapes.
Hey,
I think the author has been misquoted here. He was talking about the informality/duality of things on Indian roads. He appears to be startled by the coexistence of paradoxes, but he is surely not calling it a situation of misery! “everything in a half-and half way, half way to being or ceasing to be.” was not to be taken as literally as you just have, I think.
cheers.