When multi-disciplinary artist Ganesh Vanare uploaded photos of men holding on to the handles on local trains on his Instagram account, it struck a chord with Mumbaikars. What was so special about what is part of our daily commute? Maybe just that… the unnoticed toll that our hands take to navigate the city.

Ganesh Vanare

Vanare, a Mumbai boy through and through, says that he felt inspired one day when he took a photo on his phone of a man holding a handle in the train. “It was a random click and it made me pause and think — there’s a story behind these hands,” he says. After this it was like Vanare couldn’t unsee it. “I kept noticing it more — how people hold the handle, how their hands express fatigue, strength, loneliness and some had a quality of silence around them,” he adds.