Phantoms of the drains: imaginations of conflict in everyday infrastructures

Abstract

This article traces how the network of ordinary municipal drains (nullahs) in Northeast Delhi became a ‘trauma trove’ in the aftermath of the 2020 Delhi pogrom. Drawing on three years of sensory ethnography, it shows how the nullahs, long marked by infrastructural neglect and caste-based labor, came to hold the residual violence of Hindu–Muslim conflict. The nullah functions as haunted infrastructure: its opacity and chemical thickness invite speculation about bodies concealed or erased, while images and stories circulating via mobile phones create a digital halo that repeatedly pulls residents back into the moment of violence. The drain becomes a socio-spatial archive where fear, grief, rumor, and mistrust of the state sediment and are continually reactivated, shaping how people move, relate to neighbors, and imagine the future. By conceptualizing the nullah as a trauma trove of residual violence, the article extends debates on haunting, infrastructural violence, and necropolitics to the ordinary urban systems through which communal trauma circulates. Through memories, rumor, and imagination, shared in person and across smartphones, the drain acquires a new mobility, its mediatized afterlives transforming it from an abused urban infrastructure into an unforgettable legend.