Directions for Tracking My Ancestry

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A loud whistle.

A wood bench.

A big cloud of steam over rolling hills.

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One of my earliest memories is from when I was three years old, riding the famous and historic Strasburg steam train with my parents in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The sun was beating down on us on the platform, and when we finally entered the red carriage, the lacquered wooden benches still burned my legs under my navy sundress and my feet didn’t touch the ground. My parents were both wearing sunglasses and maybe I was too; I don’t remember much but I do remember feeling absolute bliss as I stared out the window at the endless fields we were traversing.

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I was walking home with my friends one night, my senior year of college, when Alex stopped in the middle of the street to show me something on her phone: “NATIONAL TRAIN DAY CELEBRATION!” It didn’t matter who was hosting the celebration, and quite frankly I doubt either of us remembers who it was, but she was excited to inform me about the existence of a National Train Day and I was excited to be informed about it. All of my friends know how passionate I am about trains — I had taken multiple classes on transportation systems, I was the de facto public transit navigator when we left campus, and every train meme that shows up on Alex’s timeline still ends up in my DMs. And over the past few years, as I travel often between school and home, I’ve become intimately familiar with Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor.

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Wilmington.

Philadelphia.

Trenton.

Metropark.

Newark Liberty.

Newark Penn Station.

New York Moynihan Train Hall.

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New York.

Stamford.

New Haven.

Old Saybrook.

Old Saybrook.

Old Saybrook?

Old Saybrook…

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On May 28, 2022, my beloved trains decided to let me down. A little after 2 PM,

Northeast Regional Train 194 steadily pulled away from the Joseph R. Biden Jr. Amtrak Station in my hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. I thrust my suitcase into the overhead compartment and took my place on the right side of the train, the seat next to me empty. Things were running smoothly all the way until New York, when I overheard the conductors whispering about an issue up ahead, but I didn’t think much of it. I returned to staring out the window at the lofty skyscrapers framing the train tracks, Hozier crooning sweet music in my AirPods. A couple stops later, my train halted in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. We stayed stopped for a bit longer than normal at this tiny station, where the train was so much longer than the platform that you couldn’t exit the train from the first two cars. I still didn’t think much of it, but around 7:10 PM, my apathy was interrupted by the conductor’s voice on the loudspeaker:

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Attention, ladies and gentlemen, we are experiencing some issues with the track up

ahead. Our crew is working to repair it, but we’re not sure how long it will take. We’ll

come back on here to provide updates every half hour or so.

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The entire train let out a collective groan. An older man behind me began complaining that we would be stuck there forever. The college students sitting in front of me were entirely unenthused at that prospect: they immediately banded together to order an Uber to drive them the whole 120 miles to Boston. I texted my parents, and, heeding their advice, I stayed put and waited.

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And soon enough, the conductors’ updates started to come.

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The first one implored us to be patient, and tried to tide us over with the promise of free snacks and water in the cafe car. All the other passengers swiftly made their way to the goodies, but my parents taught me that patience was a virtue, and so I stayed put. For a little while, anyway, until the promise of cold water became too enticing to ignore, and I too stood up and navigated over to the cafe car. By this time, the line had shortened, but I did not realize until I was at the front of the line that this was because they had run out of water bottles. Despair and hunger both growing, I grabbed a packet of Chex Mix and turned to head back to my seat, but I suppose my disappointment was too visible: a different older man beckoned me to his seat and handed me an unopened bottle of water and sent me away with a God bless you.

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After the third update, I moved back to the third car so that I could step out onto the platform for some fresh air. The air was not fresh. Anxious from the extenuating delays, I suppose, several passengers had taken to smoking all along the Old Saybrook station platform, which soon became so filled with the asphyxiating scent of tobacco that I quickly decided that the stale, compact train car would be better for my lungs.

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Na judaa honge hum

Kabhi khushi kabhie gham…

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The title track to the Bollywood classic hummed in my ears as I tried to distract myself from the stagnance and stress of my situation with a nice movie. It only took one or two more conductor updates before I was a sobbing mess in my seat. As Karan Johar tried to convince me that “it’s all about loving your parents,” I missed mine even though I had just been at home. I wanted to be back in my bed in Providence already, and I could not believe the trains had betrayed me so egregiously.

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K3G is a notoriously long movie, but I had more than enough time to watch the entire thing while I was stuck in Old Saybrook. Between Hrithik Roshan’s tears, trickery, and tight pants, I started to reflect on my own family and our connection with the train system that was holding me hostage. I needed someone to remind me why I loved trains, that my present situation was uncommonly unfortunate. I thought again about the kind old man in the cafe car, who evoked the stoic generosity of my dad’s father in India, and I honed in on his side of the family: trains are supposed to run majestically down the tracks, but it just so happens that they also run in my blood.

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My great-grandfather worked on the Indian national railroad in the early years of Independence as a conductor on a portion of the system known as the South Central Railway zone, which still exists and operates today. His son, my grandfather, followed in his footsteps and also made a successful career on the national railroad: his family has thrived on the housing, pension, and other benefits provided by his employer. With my grandfather often away from home for work, my dad and his siblings grew up with the railroad as another parental figure — it was the force

that, literally and figuratively, allowed them to leave home and begin their own lives in their respective corners of the world.

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When my great-grandfather and my grandfather were working on the railroad though, the national train system was playing an essential role in the development of the nascent country, connecting several disjointed states and helping to unify them. The South Central Railway zone served my ancestral home state of Andhra Pradesh, in addition to what is now Telangana, Maharashtra, and Karnataka.

 

Chennai.

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The last train I rode in India, four years before I was stuck in Old Saybrook, carried me and my family from a brief pilgrimage in the coastal city of Chennai back home to my grandparents’ apartment in Hyderabad, passing through three states along the way: Tamil Nadu - Andhra Pradesh - Telangana.

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Nellore —

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My mom is standing by the carriage exit, looking for my aunt on the platform so they can hand off some goodies. We’re not getting off here, just passing through. Oh, there’s your aunt, and oh? Tanikella Bharani, that famous actor we just met? He’s getting off here, good thing we snapped our picture with him on the train, but anyway… hey! Stay away from the windows! Stay close to me, we still have a long way to go…

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Bitragunta —

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My dad grew up in Bitragunta. A couple of times, as I lay on the top bunk of a rattling overnight sleeper car, he had shaken me awake early in the morning to show me the house he had grown up in, a little white structure nestled in a field bordering the train tracks.

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Ongole —

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My mom spent part of her childhood in Ongole. A number of her elders had still lived there when we were passing through, though their numbers have been dwindling in recent years. I had visited them a handful of times when I was much smaller, but I recalled very little of those meetings beyond the chunky little televisions with their grainy displays and the oily smell of old people.

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Guntur Junction.

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Secunderabad Junction.

Hyderabad. Home.

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On previous journeys on the Hyderabad Express, we had usually been traveling from Hyderabad to Nellore, where much of my mom’s family now lives, but we had to skip Nellore on our last trip to India. Instead, my mom’s parents met us in Hyderabad and then traveled to Chennai and back with us. Six years later, there are only a handful of station names on this route that I still recognize…

 

But most of those forgotten station stops are small villages in which I’ve never stepped foot. Hyderabad, a massive sprawling metropolis, was the center of my attention, with its rich history and culture and characters. Parts of the city are highly industrialized and developed in the western fashion, with elaborate landscaping and towering skyscrapers, while other parts still resemble the villages that I had never visited. The city is accruing acclaim for its technological power, with the geographical IT center being designated as the Hyderabad Informational Technology and Engineering Consultancy City, also known as HITEC City, also known as Cyberabad. Very clever!

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And as the city evolves, so too does its transportation system.

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The railroad is still vital to the progress of India. When we departed the Secunderabad train station, my parents called a private car to take us back to my grandparents’ apartment in Malkajgiri, and on our way through the bustling downtown of the city, I noticed huge elevated structures under construction with several signs advertising the brand-new HYDERABAD METRO. Naturally, my train-loving self was intrigued.

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Fly into Rajiv Gandhi International Airport at Hyderabad.

Take the airport shuttle to the Secunderabad East station on the Metro Blue Line.

Walk a block to Secunderabad Junction.

Take the train (NOT the Metro) to Malkajgiri Junction.

Have Ashok pick me up at the station.

Walk, scooter, or take an auto to our grandparents’ house in Malkajgiri.

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I have yet to experience the Hyderabad Metro for a wide variety of reasons: most notably, I simply haven’t been back home since the start of its operation. But the Metro’s website, at least, shows serious promise for the future of sustainable and accessible transit in India, with its declaration of utility for “all passengers, including differently-abled and elderly citizens” and clear instructions for boarding the train.

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It would have been easy for me to dismiss the Metro as another desperate attempt by South Asians to haphazardly get their infrastructure up to par with western standards for growth. We have a natural and understandable inclination towards economic development so that the whole subcontinent can endeavor to enjoy the same luxuries that I experience in America, but this is not only a resource-intensive and unsustainable process, but also one way that South Asian cultural values get lost in modernization.

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However, the Hyderabad Metro seems to reflect a careful attention to creating a well-planned and easy-to-use transportation system, from making the city more traversable and green, to displaying information in both standard and understandable English and the local language of Telugu. These attributes, which aren’t even present in several of the American transit systems I have used, make it clear that India is moving past its years of simply copycatting the western world, and is instead working towards something that accounts for the history and needs of its own citizens.

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I look forward to my return to Hyderabad, whenever that may be.

I’ll ride the Hyderabad Metro.

I’ll take the Hyderabad Express between cities.

And maybe I’ll get to see more of the South Central Railway zone that rooted my forefathers in the subcontinent, began my family’s accumulation of generational wealth, and allowed me to thrive in the U.S.

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Old Saybrook.

After 4 ½ hours of anguish and listlessness, the conductor returned to the loudspeaker for his last announcement — we were finally cleared to move ahead. At this point, half of the passengers had abandoned the train. I was finally glad I hadn’t.

 

New London — empty.

North Kingstown.

Providence!

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Providence Train Station.

2 AM Uber…

Spiral staircase.

Grad Center D. Bed.

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And I soon blissfully drifted off to sleep, dreaming of a red steam engine passing through the rolling hills of Hyderabad.

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Vasu Jayanthi (she/her) is a student in the MPA program in Environmental Science and Policy at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. She can be reached at: sj3304@columbia.edu

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