In the fall of 2000, Maura Finkelstein, a then a student at Colorado State University, spent some time in Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, conducting research with Indian landlords and Tibetan tenants as part of the School for International Training's (SIT) Tibetan Studies Programme. This visit not just sparked her interest in ethnography, but also in issues related to labourers, their housing rights and migration. From that point on, Finkelstein knew she would return to India to conduct extensive research and write in the field of anthropology. And so she did, six years later to be exact.

Originally from Washington DC, Finkelstein always wanted to be a writer, and studying anthropology gave that dream a shape. "Around 2006, I had begun a PhD programme in anthropology at Stanford University. While I knew I wanted to do research in India, I wasn't sure about the location or topic. I had friends in Mumbai, whom I had never visited, so it looked like a good place to start," she shares, adding, "A chance visit to their Lower Parel flat drew me to Mumbai city's mill lands. I was intrigued by the history of the neighbourhood but, almost more so, I was drawn in by the special stratification of Central Mumbai. Passing from the suburbs into town means you literally drive over the mill lands. And so, I was haunted by the question of what life was like in these neighborhoods I could so easily have driven over, had I not been taking the trains and visiting friends."