The film, shot over a period of three years, follows the lives of running hawkers on the trains of South Bengal in India. These hawkers belong to that overwhelming majority of India's working population (over 90%) who are frequently described as 'informal'. This informality is constituted by a state of suspension in the zone between legality and illegality. Through the lives of four such hawkers among other characters, we have tried to address the question of the hawkers' livelihood at a time when the world of commodity trade is increasingly moving to bigger sites of supermarkets and malls in India. But what we also try to do is gauge what goes on in the interstices of livelihood. Our principal interlocutors then appear as instances for consideration of not only how the trade of 'hawking' is actualised but also how such questions of livelihood become embroiled with or are mediated through singular desires and ambitions. In this lies the representational challenge that our film has taken up.

The film, shot over a period of three years, follows the lives of running hawkers on the trains of South Bengal in India. These hawkers belong to that overwhelming majority of India's working population (over 90%) who are frequently described as 'informal'. This informality is constituted by a state of suspension in the zone between legality and illegality. These hawkers, like most of their 'informal' compatriots, operate without available licenses and permits. It is in fact also illegal to carry out commercial activities of their sort. Functioning within this situation of relative precariousness, they continue to accomplish a translation of capitalism into its vernacular everyday forms via introducing a world of small, kitschy but also oddly useful objects to the daily commuter. But this commodity trade is also propped up on a world of stories and performances. The hawkers thus fill up already crowded daily trains further, with histrionics and narratives around objects that span over a bizarre range, from self-help books to fish oil. Through the lives of four hawkers and also through a number of other characters who move in and out of the narrative, the film attempts a presentation of the question of the hawkers' livelihood at a time when the world of commodity trade is increasingly moving to bigger sites of supermarkets and malls in India.