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Updated: June 2, 2025
In the grasses, in the trees, deep in the calix of punka flower and magnolia bloom, the gnats, the caterpillars, the beetles, all the microscopic, multitudinous life of the daytime drowsed and dozed. Not even the minute scuffling of a lizard over the warm, worn pavement of the colonnade disturbed the infinite repose, the profound stillness.
Within five minutes the swinging of the punka and the squeaking of the rope resumed, but regularly this time; Mahommed Gunga had apparently unearthed a man who understood the business.
The length of the suspending cords is usually a matter of accident in the construction of a punka, but a little attention to the subject will soon convince us that it is one of the most important considerations. The limit of movement of a punka is to be found in the man who pulls it.
Whether the swings are long ones or short ones, the number per minute is still the same. You cannot, therefore, alter the natural rate of movement of a punka unless you pull it at both sides. The next law is that which determines that the angles of incidence and of reflection are equal.
We are at the best hotel in Agra, and I notice as remarkable, in the printed list of prices, that a man to pull the punka in one's bedroom all night can be obtained for the sum of three annas, or six cents in silver.
The escape of animal heat from the body forms a subject which is much more complicated, and much more important, than the one we have met to consider, but it is impossible within the limits of our time to refer to it, except in the measure that is strictly necessary to elucidate the principles that should control the construction of the punka.
The swinging punka is one of the simplest forms of mechanism; it can be fitted up with the most primitive materials, and however badly made, it will always have some effect. This fact has its good and its bad aspects; it brings a certain comfort within the reach of all, but it removes a great part of that necessity which, as we all know, is the mother of invention.
It is like the passage from an attack of fever to a state of comfort in an intermittent disease. So the punka is seen everywhere in the temple and court room and other public places, as well as in private dwellings. It is one of the first things to astonish the European upon his arrival in India, and it is not long before he has to bless the happy invention.
We shall begin by directing our attention to the suspended punka, which is usually hung from the ceiling, and put in movement by a cord. The object of this class of punka is to produce a downward current of air by swinging to and fro, and the best punka is the one which throws downward the greatest quantity of air with the smallest applied force.
"Kitmudgar, remove that scorpion from the punka, before it drops into the Sahib's plate. Hold, miscreant! who told you to kill it? "'Take it up tenderly, Lift it with care, Fashioned so slenderly, Young, and so fair!
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