Punkawallah.
Punka, large, manually operated fan. Wallah, a person engaged in menial labor. Which is why I thought it was funny that it briefly became fashionable among the pundit class in this benighted country to use “wallah” to mean “nabob”. “Pundit”, from the Hindi, “Pandit”, teacher, or expert.
They were probably confused by “Shakespeare Wallah”, a 1965 Merchant Ivory film. The story and screenplay are about a traveling family theater troupe of English actors in India, who perform Shakespeare plays in towns across India, amidst a dwindling demand for their work and the rise of Bollywood.
Thanks, I didn’t know that.