Some app-based services seem like a blast from the past—will we ever leave feudal servitude behind?
It is starkly reminiscent of the punkhawallahs, bhishtis and coolies of the British Raj—the invisible ‘natives’ who pulled fan strings for memsaabs in hot Indian summers, carried water in sheep-skin pouches while running along with the sahib’s entourage or transported luggage on their heads. In Kim, Rudyard Kipling’s 1901 novel, he writes “…the coolies, earth-coloured and mute, crouched reverently some twenty or thirty yards away.”
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