As I journeyed through the city with these women, I had been thinking a lot about landscapes. When the parts of the story no longer seemed to coalesce into a plot, I thought about how incongruous things can hang together in a place, in an atmosphere. And so, I found that the antidote to my own growing vertigo was to join these women on excursions (ghumna) around the city. Though these outings happened infrequently, to go ghumna was a favourite activity of many of the women I spent time with. These women, who hailed from poor, predominantly Muslim neighbourhoods such as Nizamuddin Basti, Okhla, and Jaitpur, spent much time plotting the next opportunity to go ghumna, often concocting elaborate cover-ups for family members.
Chiragh Dilli 