Beating the summer 250 years ago

He looked up and found that a visitor who had been standing before his desk had just casually moved to and fro the thin wooden plank that was suspended across the window to keep out the glare of the sun and the movement of the plank generated waves of breeze.

It was just from that that the idea of the swinging punkah was born. It was not long before the palm-leaf fans had to make room for punkahs in offices and social gatherings, where mass-cooling was needed instead of individual fan-leaf services. The punkahs used to be pulled by men who had to wear a prescribed uniform. They were dressed in white muslin jackets tied tightly round the waist "with green sashes and gartered at the knees in like manner with the puckered sleeves in England, with white turbans, bound by the same coloured ribbon."

Apparently, the punkah was a luxury which only the rich could afford. William Hickey mentions in his Memoirs that Lord Macartnay was profoundly impressed with the "use of punkahs or hanging fans, suspended by ropes from the ceiling to cool them while eating their meals" and considered it very luxurious.

The punkah was an added attraction at social and public events. In an advertisement published by one Mr. Lathrop some time in 1808, relating to a series of lectures on mechanics at Moore’s Rooms, it was announced that he "having been informed that some ladies and gentlemen have declined to subscribe to his lectures on account of the warmth of the season, begs leave to assure them that the rooms are rendered cool and comfortable by means of punkahs and that those who attended the introductory lecture declared that they suffered no inconvenience from the heat of the weather, or the state of the air in the spacious and airy hall in which they were assembled."

Another early device to keep off the summer heat was the use of tatties, made of grass reeds and frequently sprinkled with water. Dr. Campbell, a renowned physician, wrote to a friend in England to say:

"We have very hot winds and delightful cool houses. Everybody uses tatties now. They are delightful contrivances. My hall, by means of tatties, has been cool as in Europe, while the other rooms were uninhabitable. Creating twenty five degrees difference by Fahrenheit’s thermometer, tatties are, however, dangerous when you are obliged to leave them and go abroad; the heat acts so powerfully on the body that you are commonly affected by a severe catarrh."

The first use of ice in Calcutta goes back to the close of the 18th century. While tatties and punkahs kept the room temperature low, ice lent an edge to appetite. In her interesting memoirs, Miss Goldborne makes mention of masquerades, which were a common means of amusement in the old days and ended with suppers at which, in the cold weather, fresh oysters and ices were to be had in abundance. The ice came "from some slender inland rivulets of the Ganges." Dr. Wise had left an interesting record of the indigenous process for making ice in Hooghly. A piece of ground, exposed on all four sides or with its western side protected, used to be dug to a depth of about two feet. When the general appearance of the sky foretold a frost, the pit was covered with straw in sheaves or loose, narrow paths having been left between the different beds for the purpose of workmen supplying water from jars, sunk in the ground to the shallow unglazed earthen vessels in which ice was to be frozen.

During the day, the upper layers of straw in the beds were dried in the sun. At dusk, shallow earthen freezing vessels were arranged in rows on the straw and each was filled about a third with water. During the night, ice formed in the vessels and freezing commenced before or about two or three in the morning. Seven or eight persons attended each bed, and with semi-circular blunt knives removed the ice and water into earthen vessels.

But in spite of all the precautions taken, a slow melting was inevitable and therefore, the ice used to be transported to consuming centres as quickly as possible.

The ice-makers of Hooghly were great speculators and so regulated their production and created such artificial scarcities as enabled them to dictate their terms. But their trade received a rude shock when Calcutta had its first Ice House—an odd looking, squat structure almost opposite Hare Street, where all of Calcutta’s ice was stored. The story of the origin of the Ice House is interesting.

In 1834, an enterprising American, an apothecary by profession, brought some 40 tons of ice from Boston to Calcutta. Blocks of ice, each weighing two maunds, had never been seen in Calcutta before. The gentlemen of the Settlement were so obliged to him that, headed by Bishop Wilson, they presented him with a silver cup to serve as a "stimulus for further exertions."

The practical possibilities of importing ice from Boston, in spite of a distance of 22,000 miles of sea, were demonstrated, and the idea caught the imagination of Longueville Clarke, a shrewd businessman.