The bahi still holds
the cord that pulls it, but it is because he has tied it to his hand. He
has gently slid to the floor in a squatting posture. He is asleep and you
are burning. A vigorous exclamation brings him to his feet all standing,
and he begins to pull the punka with all his might, and you have a
feeling of ease and coolness. 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.
Although, in a country where the temperature generally reaches, and even
often exceeds, 40 deg. C., it is absolutely necessary to obtain by every
means possible a factitious coolness without which the Indies would not
be habitable for Europeans; and although there is no hesitancy in putting
up these punkas everywhere to be maneuvered by bahis, the elevation of
the temperature is not such in France that we are obliged to have
recourse to such processes. But, without being forced thereto by nature,
it is none the less true that we are often the more incommoded by heat in
that we are not accustomed to it, and that in southern France, at certain
hours of the day, such heat becomes absolutely unbearable.
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