The quirky world of local trains

A photo zine by Ritesh Uttamchandani takes the reader into the public and private spaces on Mumbai's local trains

- Avantika Bhuyan

'Snoops on a Train' is a chronicle of a sub-culture of shared reading.

In the recently published photo-zine, Snoops on a Train, you feel like a fly on the wall in a typical Mumbai local train compartment. Bursting at the seams, the commuters become a part of the mass of humanity that enters this 12-rake sardine can daily. Some look out, others engage in small talk, while some read papers or remain glued to their phones—but each has one eye trained on someone else's conversation/phone/reading material.

"Everyone must obey the unwritten law of sharing till their arrival at their destination unglues them...," writes photographer Ritesh Uttamchandani in the introduction to his self-published zine.

This is his latest publication after books such as The Red Cat and Other Stories and