The Off Topic Topic

[Duque de Bragança]

What does Wallah mean?

Swearing.

By God. (followed by I swear or a synonym). For the identity politics muslim crowd, using the name of God in vain, i.e blasphemy, is comical in a way.

[Richard Hakluyt]

It has a different meaning in the UK, picked up from the Raj. It means a person but you link it to something else, eg  a rickshaw-wallah or, much used in Britain in the 1980s a dole-wallah (ie unemployed person).

[Sheilbh]

Yeah although I think it's less common now. But you'll see chaiwala as a common name for an Indian cafe.

Edit: Looked wallahs up on Wiki and really like that satellite dish installers in India and Pakistan are called dishwallahs. Also quite like puncturewallahs for people who deal with punctured tyres.

[Josquius]

I've never heard it in the UK but I do remember some Indian guys explaining it to me years ago that it basically means guy doing a thing.
So if you're being funny and slangy a programmer is a code wallah, a stripper is a strip wallah, whatever.
Seems common in India still.
But ya. Chai wallah is the main use.

[Syt]

In the Space Captain Smith book "The God Emperor of Didcot" which largely is set on a planet that's essentially Space India/Afghanistan and which is a critical supply of tea for the war effort against the Ants, the British colonials use wallah-bots for menial work.