Home-Making Is City-Making! Everyday Narratives of Domesticity, Dispossession, and Inhabitation in Delhi's Urban Peripheries

Since 2018, Madiha has lived in four different homes—sometimes independently, sometimes shared. After marrying Salman, she moved to Savda Ghevra, living in a three-story house with her in-laws. The plot was allotted to her father-in-law, Razzaq, in 2006, and the family expanded the house as the brothers got married. The men, mostly in construction, built it themselves, led by Razzaq, a retired mason who used savings and borrowed funds for the project. After 15 years, the house needed repairs, but disputes among the brothers prevented it.

In September 2023, part of the house collapsed, injuring Razzaq and his youngest son Faizan. Razzaq, trapped under the rubble, broke his hips and leg, and Madiha, along with the other women, rescued them. This incident led to the three brothers and their families resorting to rental properties and escalated the property dispute in the extended family. While Razzaq spent two months recovering in the hospital, Madiha and her family moved to a rental in K-block. After four months, they moved to A-block but had to return to the collapsed house when the landlady evicted them, citing Hindu-Muslim communal tensions.

Throughout this difficult period, Madiha supported her family with various home-based jobs while also enduring domestic abuse from her husband, who suffers from smack addiction. Drawing from participant observations and oral history, this paper follows Madiha’s life in Delhi’s Savda Ghevra resettlement colony and presents narratives of inhabiting the city through everyday domestic practices. It argues that the process of city-making is deeply intertwined with home-making, highlighting how the production of space and city-making cannot be understood without the struggles for domesticity. The paper highlights Madiha’s and her family’s everyday struggles around housing and infrastructure and reflects on broader issues of dispossession, claims, and belonging in Delhi’s urban peripheries.