India, April 12 -- In a city like Chandigarh, where sectors fall into place with geometric certainty and planning is almost a civic virtue, the idea of land existing in limbo feels out of character. And yet, at its edges are plots that have been allotted, priced, litigated and even reallocated over decades, but remain uninhabitable.

They exist on paper. They exist in records. They exist in the memories of those once promised them. On the ground, however, they continue to wait - for electricity, for water, for something as basic as a zoning plan. In that gap between allocation and actualisation lies a different way of looking at how cities unfold, not always in straight lines or in sync with the expectations they set.

Drawn before it was...