It is nearly impossible to think about the city of Mumbai without its suburban railway system. With more than 7.5 million people using the system each day, even outnumbering the populations of a few countries. This public transport system is where a large number of Mumbaikars spend a considerable time commuting from home to their workplace, week after week, and year after year. The series stems from the thought I often have while travelling in the locals. Do these ‘public’ trains contain 7.5 million private spaces, closely packed together into numerous horizontal skyscrapers? Each person jostles for a toehold on the train, the same way they jostle to claim a toehold in India’s most expensive city. Can this vast suburban railway system be considered an extension of Mumbaikars homes, despite being a shared transportation system? Where does the ‘private’ space end and the ‘public’ of the train begin in one of the most densely populated urban agglomerations in the world? The chaotic game of musical chairs at the stations, endless stares out of the window (if you manage to get a seat), and men and women hang precariously on the footboard while the safety announcement drowns in their chatter. This series does not intend to romanticise a system which claims an average of 5 lives per day, but considering the enormous number of people travelling on a system which doesn’t have doors which close, this number is miraculously low. This series is an ode to this incredible system which keeps India’s financial capital running. It is an ode to those people who have been taking these trains for years, while harbouring aspirations to own a private car someday. But till then, staking claim to one square foot of space on Borivali Slow departing from Churchgate.