A recent press report about the new offering from Airbus Industrie mentioned - among other features - the aircraft's ability to fly nonstop from USA to India, a distance of nearly 20,000 km. Around the same time, I received an interesting mailer from British Airways, talking about their Number One Line status in 1950 (they were BOAC then) and how they covered the London-Tokyo journey in the shortest time. Their propeller Aeronauts made ``only 13 stops'' en route - Rome, Cairo, Basra, Bahrain, Karachi, Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta, Colombo, Rangoon, Bangkok, Singapore and Hong Kong! There were at least 4 crew changes and the crew stayed at the BOAC station house - tin roof barracks - at each airport. No wonder getting around the world in 80 days was considered a great feat.Why even go back to 1950? It wan't too long ago - till the Concorde became a reality - that the London-New York journey took at least eight hours. Most of us still spend the same time crossing the Atlantic but after the Mach 2.2 marvel started operating, if you're well connected, you can have a propah English breakfast in Buck House and be in time for your lunch date with Bill and Hillary at the White House.It's not only aviation - indeed, travel - which has seen changes of such magnitude. A recent mailer from a well known hotel chain offered discounted rate for their suites - just $900 per night - which roughly translates to Rs 40,000. Even their regular rooms are priced at Rs 12,000. Just three decades ago, a huge room in the gracious old wing of the famed Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay cost only Rs 90, full breakfast included!The auction, last year, of a 1,300 sq metres commercial plot in Gurgaon, Haryana, fetched a record Rs 20.5 crore. All-inclusive, it works out to almost Rs 2 lakh per sq metre, or 20 paise per sq millimetre - about the price you would have paid for a million times the area in 1947. That's appreciation for you, a million times in 50 years! It's not for nothing that they say that there's real money only in real estate.When a friend's grandfather was `gifted' - in appreciation of his services to the Raj - 2,000 acres of marshland in the Terai, he had to persuade friends and relatives to accept part of it gratis. He was forced to keep 200 acres for himself - enough now for his grandsons to live like kings!IIT graduates in 1962 - the year I finished college - started at a princely salary of Rs 350 per month. Try offering that to your bartan wali or the little mundu now. Many engineering graduates - especially MBAs - now start life at 35,000 or more per month, but it needs both husband and wife to slog 15 hours a day just to lead a `decent' lifestyle.I remember the gourmet executive lunch at Milk-Bar in Delhi's Connaught Place - soup, salad, main dish, dessert, coffee, all for the grand sum of Rs 4.50. And there was music at the touch of a button at four annas a number. The bearer wouldn't stop salaaming if you left an 8-anna tip. Espresso coffee - the in thing in those days, cost only 8 annas at Davicos and you got a brownie free. The humble dosa now costs Rs 75 at Dasaprakash and a meal at any five star restaurant could cost you upward of Rs 1,000 per head, without drinks. Toilet attendants expect a minimum tip of Rs 5. The parking valet would, of course, be offended by that pittance.Mr father bought me my first car - a brand new Fiat 1100 - in 1964 for the princely sum of Rs 14,700. Now it costs more to get a decent music system for your car. A two-wheeler could set you back by Rs 30,000. Petrol was 12 annas a litre till the early sixties. So a Rs 75 per month scooter allowance was sheer luxury. I doubt if it would last the distance at current prices.But why crib? None of this looks bad when you see the `million factor' in land prices. It's all relative, isn't it?
