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Updated: June 25, 2025
The stone floor had been freshly sprinkled with water, and the ceiling was high, made of dark teak wood, and it was very dark inside, and damp and rather cool. There was a punkah hanging from the ceiling, but it stood at rest. Its movement had come to make the Administrator nervous.
The dining-room was entirely of cedar, and the floor like a mirror, very spacious, and it partly projected over the river. Above the dining-table was a large punkah, which was kept in constant motion during dinner by two young grinning black girls. The table groaned with good things, and we did ample justice to our host’s entertainment.
Where you exist in a sort of Turkish bath at from 90° to 100°, you want to be saved every possible reason for leaving your office to conduct your business; and the telephone comes in as a means whereby you can do so, and can loll back in your arm chair, with your legs up in the air, with a cigar in your mouth, with a punkah waving over your head, and a bottle of iced water by your side.
Assam, the Madrassee, is handsomer and statelier than Babu at Malacca; a smart Malay lad helps him, and a Chinaman sits on the steps and pulls the punkah.
Overhead, the punkah swung slowly, stirring the scented air. These were the scents he had dreamed of, the rich, heavy perfumes of the Tropics. Only it was all so dull! The door opened and a little girl entered the verandah, a child of perhaps fourteen. A doomed child. He looked at her languidly, and continued to look at her, thinking vague thoughts. She was beautiful.
The north-east monsoon still blows fresh and strong, but it was nevertheless terribly hot in the streets, and we were very glad to return to the cool, shady rooms at Government House, where we thoroughly appreciated the delights of the punkah.
He dismissed the punkah coolie, feeling his presence to be intolerable, and threw himself down with his coat flung open. The oppression of the atmosphere was as though a red-hot lid were being forced down upon the tortured earth. The blackness beyond the veranda was like a solid wall. Sleep was out of the question. He could not smoke. It was an effort even to breathe.
Mr Smyth first speaks of the uselessness of the punkah, and the danger of the wet mats.
He stood apart in shadow, swaying on his feet. "What would you give," he propounded thickly, "for a hay harvest breeze?" He climbed, or rolled, upon the billiard-table, turned head toward punkah, and suddenly lay still, a gross white figure, collapsed and sprawling. "How much does he think a man can stand?" snapped Nesbit, his lean Cockney face pulled in savage lines. "Beast of a song!
Sita Ram held it by two corners under the draughty punkah while Samson traced the boundaries with his finger. It was exactly as he thought: without that little palace and its grounds, the state of Sialpore would be bounded exactly by the river. Take away the so-called River Palace with the broad acres surrounding it, and the river would no longer run through the state of Sialpore.
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