'Punkah-wallah' of yore

Hall Bazaar, Amritsar, and history seem to be synonymous. A visit there never disappoints, particularly if you are accompanied by a friend. We arrive at his family shop, Kumar Electricals, a shop of repute in the days gone by.

Lighting up religious places was their ardent sewa; for commercial gains, marriages, birth celebrations and such like were enough.

Most shops of yore had historical photos, certificates, letters of appreciation displayed on the walls, so was the case here. My scan homed on to a photo of two well-built muscular men standing by the sides of a fan, which appeared much larger than a normal one.

One was soon wiser, these were rather heavy due to an inbuilt motor unit and thick wiring, thus lifting and fixing a fan was not an easy job. In the absence of hydraulics, installing one was an intricate affair, besides a ladder and high wooden stand (kori in the vernacular) availability of physical strength was more important. Muscular strong men came in the role of hydraulic cranes, who lifted these high enough to make it convenient for the electrician to fix the fan! Further ahead, the photo display had one of the Indian punkah suspended from the ceiling and pulled by a punkah-wallah.

This contraption had come to India sometime in the early 17th century, for the luxury of the white rulers and rich Indians. The labour involved was painstaking and these human operators often functioned singly, the lucky ones did so in pairs.

There was a photo of a group of women sitting with the traditional hand-held fan (pakhi). One recollected using these in the past. Waving this through 180 degrees was tedious, one can only pity the punkah-wallahs.

With time came an awesome development, of a hollow cylindrical piece of bamboo being looped into the staff of the fan which made airing possible, all through 360 degrees! The embroidered ones, with the famed phulkari remain a collector’s item. Today, although these have been replaced by the rechargeable portable hand-held ones, seeing the growing power crisis, the day is not far for the present generation to utilise the pakhi!

No writing of the ubiquitous fan can be complete without a mention of the unique ones in Parliament. The ceiling fans there are ground mounted but inverted. This innovation came about as the Central Hall dome was rather high, a long enough rod could not be fixed to the ceiling to ensure that the breeze reaches the hard-working parliamentarians! Today, the air-conditioners have gained ground, but the ceiling fan is difficult to replace, as the words go, ‘Like the grand AC you do not wheeze, you give only but a soft breeze, you do not easily tire, a quite dashing point to admire, your airs remind me of the sea, O how I wish to take you wherever I be, I much crave thy breeze n winds…’God bless this wonderful piece of technology!