In this episode of The Unofficial Seminar, Arup K. Chatterjee meets the railfan and photographer, Apurva Bahadur, who offers a self-aware meditation on his experience of the Indian railways. It begins with a personal detail that is also a cultural one, for his name was drawn from Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy, a tribute chosen by his father who taught films. From there, the discussion moves quickly to the deeper source of Bahadur’s railway enthusiasm. He describes trains not as a passing hobby, but as the single great interest that has shaped his eye and his habits. For him, the railway is not merely a means of transport. It is an object of beauty, a field of pleasure, and a subject that gives intellectual satisfaction. The conversation frames railway photography less as a technical practice and more as a sustained way of seeing.
Bahadur is careful to distinguish his practice from a more general kind of scenic photography. He says that when a landscape or bridge catches his attention during a journey, he notes the kilometre marker and returns later to photograph the spot properly. That method gives his work a patient and almost archival quality. It also shows that his eye is not driven by chance alone, but by repeated observation and return. In the same spirit, he describes railfanning as something that became larger once the internet connected scattered enthusiasts. Before that, he had been one person with a camera and a liking for locomotives. Afterwards, he found himself part of a larger circle of people with the same devotion. The result was not fashion, but fellowship. The railway became a shared language among people who otherwise might never have met.
One of the strongest strands in the discussion is his refusal to treat railway photography as a theatre of decline. Bahadur says plainly that he is not interested in showing poverty, dirt or bad crowds as the main subject. He prefers photographs that keep faith with the beauty of the railway itself. It is a deliberate editorial choice. He repeats that the pictures on his page are meant to remain positive, and he is unbothered by the lack of mass visibility. He even says that he is not here to be famous, but to be happy. This is an important clue to his whole outlook. His work is not organised around audience capture or public approval. It is organised around fidelity to his own pleasure and conviction. In that sense, his photographs are personal documents that happen to be public. They are made first for the eye that takes them.
The conversation also brings out the social history of train travel in India. Bahadur accepts that as incomes rise, many travellers shift from train to flight. He observes that air travel is efficient, but it does not teach the same lessons as rail travel. A train journey, by contrast, creates time for looking, speaking, waiting and noticing. He presents travel as a process rather than a shortcut. That process includes stations, platforms, sidings, scenery and conversations with other enthusiasts. He is particularly alive to the loss of local food and regional character at stations. He recalls older railway stops where one could seek out specific dishes and local tea. He says that many stations now look standardised. Food has become more controlled, architecture more uniform, and the old regional character less visible. Yet his tone remains measured. He notes the gains in cleanliness, speed and ticketing, even while regretting the thinning of local flavour.
That same balance appears in his account of long rail journeys. Bahadur describes his present yatra as a form of disciplined wandering, in which the point is not merely to arrive. He often travels alone, stays on trains as long as possible, and avoids hotels and tourist traps whenever he can. The logic is simple and exacting. He wants to maximise contact with the railway itself. He sees no contradiction in moving from place to place without turning the trip into conventional sightseeing. In one of the more striking passages, he explains that he may even go to Agra and not see the Taj Mahal. The aim is not destination in the ordinary sense. It is immersion in movement, stations and timetables. He also treats the journey as mental training. One studies delays, connections and feasibility before departure. One learns to sit with uncertainty. One learns self reliance without solitude becoming desolation.
The podcast ends by returning to the question of how railway images should be made and read. Bahadur says he dislikes selfies in this context, and he dislikes branding text placed over photographs. He prefers the image to stand on its own. He also rejects the commercial temptation to tailor work for revenue or easy attention. For him, a good photograph should be accompanied by correct knowledge. The caption matters because it completes the record with precision, offering the event, the train, the surroundings and a small anecdote where needed. He describes the finished image and caption as a complete couplet, beginning and ending in one place. Bahadur treats railways as something to be loved without irony, observed without cynicism, and described without decorative excess. He does not sentimentalise the subject, yet he resists the fashionable habit of finding only decline or spectacle. Instead, he offers an ethic of looking that is patient, exact and deeply local. It is a reminder that railway history is not only found in archives and official reports. It also survives in the habits of enthusiasts, in photographs taken at inconvenient hours, and in journeys made for the sake of the journey itself.
Arup K. Chatterjee 