Close to 80 lakh commuters shuttle up and down Mumbai’s three local train lines every day. How do they pass the time, which can stretch from a few minutes to a couple of hours? Some play cards or tune into music on their phones. Others catch up with their train buddies or scribble the names of their gods in notebooks. At least one man draws.
Amol Urankar, a 29 year-old illustrator who works at the advertising company Tailor India in Chembur in north-eastern Mumbai, marks the nearly hour-long commute between his home in Panvel and his workplace by sketching his fellow passengers. Over the past several months, he has been capturing the quirks and characteristics of the “super-dense crush load”, the term that railway officials use to describe the rush-hour density. Urankar looks for singular quirks and markers, such as a commuter fiddling with his cellphone, or another deep in thought. “Every commuter has emotions, despite how crowded the train is,” he observed.
The drawings are graphic versions of a similar project by Mumbai photographer Chirodeep Chaudhuri, who published his striking images of train travellers in the book Commuters in 2012.
Urankar, who trained at the Sir JJ Institute of Applied Arts, first draws an outline in his book and fills it out with blue and green ink afterwards. “I sketch from whatever angle I get,” Urankar said. He prefers to be discreet, but it’s hard to remain unnoticed in a crammed compartment. “Some people like to be sketched, and I gift them the drawings afterwards,” he said. A single illustration doesn’t take him more than 10 or 15 minutes.
Urankar grew up and continues to live in Panvel, which is the last station on the Harbour line. The local train service has connected him to college and various workplaces since his adolescence. The Harbour line is the most rickety of the city’s three services, and it is also the slowest, since it does not have any express services unlike the other lines. “The trains are old, and the ventilation is poor,” Urankar observed. “But the Harbour line crowds are more helpful than on other lines. They are also more diverse." From his vantage point, Urankar has observed the mind-boggling variety of travellers every day from the lowest and middle strata of society going from one place to another on the fastest possible mode of public transport available to the maximum city. “When I am drawing, I don’t know how the time passes,” Urankar said.
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Amol Urankar, a 29 year-old illustrator who works at the advertising company Tailor India in Chembur in north-eastern Mumbai, marks the nearly hour-long commute between his home in Panvel and his workplace by sketching his fellow passengers. Over the past several months, he has been capturing the quirks and characteristics of the “super-dense crush load”, the term that railway officials use to describe the rush-hour density. Urankar looks for singular quirks and markers, such as a commuter fiddling with his cellphone, or another deep in thought. “Every commuter has emotions, despite how crowded the train is,” he observed.
The drawings are graphic versions of a similar project by Mumbai photographer Chirodeep Chaudhuri, who published his striking images of train travellers in the book Commuters in 2012.
Urankar, who trained at the Sir JJ Institute of Applied Arts, first draws an outline in his book and fills it out with blue and green ink afterwards. “I sketch from whatever angle I get,” Urankar said. He prefers to be discreet, but it’s hard to remain unnoticed in a crammed compartment. “Some people like to be sketched, and I gift them the drawings afterwards,” he said. A single illustration doesn’t take him more than 10 or 15 minutes.
Urankar grew up and continues to live in Panvel, which is the last station on the Harbour line. The local train service has connected him to college and various workplaces since his adolescence. The Harbour line is the most rickety of the city’s three services, and it is also the slowest, since it does not have any express services unlike the other lines. “The trains are old, and the ventilation is poor,” Urankar observed. “But the Harbour line crowds are more helpful than on other lines. They are also more diverse." From his vantage point, Urankar has observed the mind-boggling variety of travellers every day from the lowest and middle strata of society going from one place to another on the fastest possible mode of public transport available to the maximum city. “When I am drawing, I don’t know how the time passes,” Urankar said.
