Ineeded no navigational assistance when I got off the Metro at Jasola Vihar. I walked onto the footbridge leading to Shaheen Bagh. Once at street level, I hesitated for a moment. My gut feeling to take a right was validated by my having sighted groups of people emerging from that direction with the Indian tricolour painted on either or both cheeks. I continued walking until the road seemed shut, then I went left and then right. By now the energy was palpable, even someone with a visual impairment could have found her way to the protest site. I was lured by the energy. It was 9 pm but the streets leading to the tented zone where, for over a month, Muslim women have been staging a sit-in against the discriminatory CAA and its potential weaponisation in conjunction with the NRC and NPR, were teeming with people exiting and entering. There was possibly no way of tracking how many people were there at any given point in time that evening, as bodies that were leaving were being continually replaced by bodies that were joining in.

On Wednesday, January 15, Sikh farmers and activists had come in from Punjab to offer their solidarity with the Muslim women. By the time I was heading there, a vast section of them had already made their way to Gate No. 7 at Jamia Millia Islamia. As I finally approached the site where it seemed, easily, like there were people in thousands, I had goosebumps. After having been in Goa and Mumbai over Christmas, spending time with my family of origin, I felt elated to have returned 'home' to Delhi.