In the colonial age, the word came to be used in British India and elsewhere in the tropical and subtropical world for a large swinging fan, fixed to the ceiling, and pulled by a coolie, called the punkah wallah in India, during hot weather. To cover a larger area, such as in an office or a courthouse, a number of punkahs could be connected together by strings so that they would swing in unison.
In India and Pakistan, a punkah wallah or punkahwallah (Hindi: पङ्खावाला, paṅkhāvālā) is a manual fan operator.[1] The most desired were deaf because they were always within earshot of confidential conversations. A punkah is a type of ceiling fan used in the Indian subcontinent before the electric fan. The punkhawallah was the servant who worked it, often using a pulley system. The word pankha originated from pankh, the wings of a bird which produce a draft when flapped.
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