Punkah - Wikipedia A punkah, also pankha (Urdu: پَنکھا, Hindi: पंखा, paṅkhā), is a type of fan used since the early 6th century BC The word pankha originated from pankh, the wings of a bird which produce a current of air when flapped
Punkah: The Hand Operated Ceiling Fans of Colonial India Those who could afford had punkahs, or ceiling fans, that were swung with the help of a long string to produce a cooling draft A punkah was usually rectangular in shape and was made from cane, or a flat wooden frame covered with cloth
The Sensu Punkah: A Ceiling Fan That Flaps Instead of Rotating In South Asia, a similar fan existed for centuries and was called a punkah Made from plant fibers or fabric, it was essentially a plane of material hung vertically from the ceiling, and powered by a person tugging on a string
The punkah and its pullers: A short history | Servants Pasts The continuous use of the punkah and punkah coolies became particularly significant in army barracks of European soldiers since the 1840s, when their health became a pressing problem for the colonial government
Punkahs, punkahwallahs, and White sahibs in Colonial India Punkah' is a colonial-era anglicisation of the Hindustani term pankha, which referred to handheld fans Punkah-pullers were made to work in deliberately uncomfortable conditions In colonial India, however, the term punkah came to refer to the large, rope-pulled, swinging fan hung from the ceiling
The Punkah-wallah: the human engine behind colonial comfort During the British colonial era in India, and long before the hum of air conditioning, coping with the subcontinent’s intense heat required ingenuity and labor The term Punkah-Wallah emerged to describe those employed to manually operate large, ceiling-suspended cloth fans
Punkah - Academic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias (esp in India) a fan, esp a large, swinging, screenlike fan hung from the ceiling and moved by a servant or by machinery adj 2 of, pertaining to, used on, or working a punkah: punkah ropes