In Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka’s rich career as a social anthropologist, 1979 marks the year of her first entry into the field. I was born in that year and I first entered the field a full three dec-ades later – in 2009. Professor Pfaff-Czarnecka describes her first field experience in Nepal asexciting but challenging, primarily due to the mutual foreignness between her, as a whitewoman from Europe, and the village community in Nepal tucked away in the many foldsof the Himalayas. My first encounter with my field in India was enmeshed with my identityas a child of Indian parents originally from the city of Bangalore who migrated and settledin Switzerland. I came to discover Bangalore during subsequent summer holidays spentamong the same people. In 2009, I entered this city that I partly called home, partly lovedand partly despised, with an entirely new mind-set. I wanted to explore social inequalitiesand their production in a highly stratified society. In particular, I was interested in investi-gating the pervasiveness of inadequate housing for the urban poor despite sustainedeconomic growth and rapidly transforming urban landscapes. Bangalore was well suited forthis endeavour, as I was able to work with slum-dwellers – a population marginalised onmany fronts in terms of housing, access to productive land, crucial urban services, and alsoeducation. Notwithstanding the substantial differences in how Professor Pfaff-Czarneckaand I achieved ‘first entry’ as researchers, and the considerable time lag between our fieldvisits, which were set in contrasting rural and urban settings, I am struck by the similaritiesof the lessons learned from our respective fieldwork experiences.