ABSTRACT
In 2020, amid raging Covid, two images from New Delhi struck me in a vast array of visuals, charts, and graphs. The first was the Inter-State Bus Terminal (ISBT) in Anand Vihar. ISBT is one of the main transportation hubs that runs thousands of buses daily to and from New Delhi to neighbouring states of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Punjab, and Haryana. As millions of migrants from India's metropolises journeyed back to their villages by any means possible, often walking hundreds of kilometres, grim stories of their return, of hunger, starvation, and death from all over India came to make headline news. To reflect on the heterogeneity of processes, practices, and experiences that constitute the contemporary urban landscape, the comparativist stance has opened the possibility for “thinking through elsewhere” and develop “methodologies and practices which require conversations to be intrinsically open to revision, making space for insights starting from anywhere”.
