Big fan of those big fans of Parliament

For fans of the old Parliament House, one vital part of the furniture will be sorely missed – its fans. Those inverted, slow- twirling fans in the old central hall cropping up from the ground have been so wonderfully 20th century, quite like most of those who plied their business there since 1927, when the building was used as the seat of pre-independent India‘s Imperial Legislative Council till 1950, when it turned into Parliament House. The ground-mounted ‘ceiling’ fans remained untouched even as the air changed in the domed building.

So, why were the central hall’s ceiling fans not hanging from the, um, ceiling? Simply because the vaunted ceiling was so high that lengthening the pole would have made the rotary fans ineffective, even dangerous. So, to ensure that the cool, stirring air inside Parliament would not remain in the upper echelons of the building, the bright idea of upside-down fans was implemented. These ‘windmills’ may remind some wags of the kind that Don Quixote of the constituency of La Mancha would tilt at, especially since ’tilting at windmills’ has come to mean ‘attacking imaginary enemies’, an SOP for India’s parliamentarians down the decades. But these are genteel, handsome fans that will be missed in the new venue. Thankfully, hot air will continue to be stirred ‘from below’ as usual by the MPs themselves.