All day long, Subodh Mahato cools postal workers in this West Bengal village by tugging a rope attached to a grass-mat ceiling fan. He’s been pulling it for 17 years because no one thought to connect the post-office to the power grid. He is the last known pankha-puller in the state—a breed dying with the spread of electricity. But for Mahato, who toils through muscle ache and monotony for about Rs 2,250 a month, it’s the best job he can get.Kantadih sits in a neglected stretch of West Bengal, about 200 km north of Kolkata. With its several hundred people, it is just important enough to have a sub-post-office in a small, rented building on the walled campus of a local high school.The outpost’s three full-time staff and five part-timers serve around 30,000 people in 11 villages. They sort and deliver about 300 letters a day. It is a restful place. The only noise is the occasional thump of a rubber stamp, the wail of a distant train, and on this day, the steady, all-day rain.Because there’s no electricity, the pankha is all that stirs when the post-office heats up during the summer months. The fan is made of two grass mats, sewn together, with a red cloth border that is badly frayed. It is about 5 feet across and swings on chains from a wooden cross bar over the desk of the sub-postmaster, Jiban Mukherjee, and postal assistant Karan Chandra Mandi.It was 1986 when the sub-postmaster sent a messenger to summon Mahato and asked if he wanted to pull the pankha from 10 am to 4 pm every day—with a 10-minute break for lunch—for about Rs 350 a month. Mahato, now 38, was the sub-postmaster’s last hope. No one else wanted to do it.At first, Mahato’s thin wrists and shoulders ached from the repetitive pulling, and his wife had to massage him every day after work. But with time, the pain passed, and Mahato kept pulling. ‘‘No, I never thought of quitting this job,’’ he says. ‘‘Tell me, what else can I do if I quit?’’Even with steady pay raises over the years, Mahato earns about Rs 2,250 a month and supports an extended family of 13 people. By his village standards, it’s not a bad wage for a man who can’t read and can only write his name. Mahato sits a few feet away from the sub-postmaster’s desk, on a grimy white plastic chair in the shadows. His back is straight, his stare blank, and one arm is raised at a right angle, pulling a lime green nylon rope attached to the pankha. ‘‘No, I don’t feel bored. I have gotten used to it,’’ he says. ‘‘There are times when, even if I doze off, my hand keeps tugging at the rope automatically.’’While the bosses he cools wish for the day when a more efficient machine replaces him, they also worry that he won’t find another job.Mahato would rather be pursuing his real passion: cockfighting. He has trained several of his birds to be winners but there’s little profit in village gaming. When he pulls the pankha, Mahato insists: ‘‘My mind is completely clear. Except, of course, at times when my son or someone else in the family is unwell. Then I only think of them.’’Mahato knows that someday progress must come, even to Kantadih sub-post-office. When that happens, his pankha will come down, an electrical ceiling fan will kick in, and he will be out of a job. He’s worried it will happen soon, and he won’t have even Rs 350 a month to put his 5-year-old son in school. ‘‘I don’t know what I will do—except for begging, maybe,’’ he says.LAT-WP
