Each December, just when the NRIs begin to wend their way to India, I get a few emails. These have to do with queries about ancestors, places where they resided and whether I have heard about them. In most instances, the details are sketchy, at best — name, a broad idea of locality, a place of employment, and year of death. I usually regret my inability to assist, given the meagre background information.
This year has been no different. I have an email about a Percy Charles Wood, born on October 23, 1874, and who worked at the Perambur railway and was ‘part of the southern Indian railway army’. The family believes he lived in Chennai or Perambur between 1892 and 1929 and is keen to find his residential address and trace his roots. Now what do you do with these facts? At first read it is clear that Wood worked in the Perambur Railway Workshops, then the maintenance and repairs facility of the Madras Railway Company (MRC). Given that he was born in 1874 and may have entered employment 20 years later, he would have joined the MRC, which around 15 years later merged with the Southern Mahratta Railway and became the Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway Company (M&SM). Wood must have continued with the new entity and 1929 tallies with the year he must have retired from service, for the age of superannuation in the private railways of yore was 55.
Part of an army?
I am, however, intrigued by the reference to his having been a part of the southern Indian railway army. In Wood’s time, there was no Southern Railway; the entity having come into existence only in the early 1950s, post nationalisation. The M&SM was at that time merged with the South Indian Railway Company (SIRC), headquartered in Tiruchi, to become Southern Railway, all of which was much after Wood’s time. I am at best hazarding a guess that Wood was part of the voluntary reserve force that the railway put together during the First World War. The email does not state this, but I assume Wood was an Anglo-Indian. The railways across India were a major employer of this community and they left their stamp on the cultural ethos of the organisation. Railway institutes, which were in reality social clubs, came up wherever there existed a major railway junction. Here the fun-loving Anglo Indians congregated and celebrated their lives. There was a serious side to these institutes as well — music, dance and sports developed, and many from the community left their mark on these fields. I wonder if Wood too tripped the light fantastic as I believe the expression is. Considering that he lived in Perambur, he must have been a member of the railway institute there.
An impossible task
Searching for his house, without even a door number or a street name, is an impossible task. Indian cities and towns change face and contour every day. And to add to the confusion, we have had door numbers changed at least five times since 1929. Wood in my view is lost to posterity. The family may institute a search within railway records — Southern Railway has a very efficient public relations office at its headquarters next to Central. Another option is to check at the church that Wood prayed at. Perambur has many, but there again a denominational quest may narrow options.
(V. Sriram is a writer and historian)
