“The organisation of the city fascinated Mr. Biswas: the street lamps going on at the same time, the streets swept in the middle of the night, the rubbish collected by the scavenging carts early in the morning; the furtive macabre sounds of the nightsoil removers; the newsboys, really men; the bread van, the milk that came, not from cows, but in rum bottles stopped with brown paper. Mr. Biswas was impressed when Dehuti and Ramchand spoke proprietorially of streets and shops, talking with the ease of people who knew their way around the baffling city. Even about Ramchand’s going out to work every morning there was something knowing, brave and enviable.” V.S. Naipaul, A House for Mr. Biswas, p. 311-12.