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The Spectator
He belonged to one of Kolkata’s most elegant families. Urbane, well-heeled and cultured. And he was regaling his guests at the Tolly Club with anecdotes from his well-travelled life: the story he was narrating was to illustrate the snobbishness that existed even at the highest echelons of international society. “I was overhearing a top American banker boasting to a friend about the luxuries he had enjoyed flying First Class recently. The friend on his part told him about his own favourite airline and the First Class perks he had experienced. It was all very old boys’s being snooty and indulging in some one-upmanship until the third person in the group piped up and said: “Well, you know I wouldn’t know — because I haven’t flown commercial for so long…” And that put the other two in their place!
How the rich travel has fascinated me and has been uppermost on my mind as I had an extraordinary insight in one instance.
Yesterday, while travelling to Goa, I was intrigued when I saw what looked like an Indian investment banker with a terribly upper-class English accent accompanied by three Japanese children, a pretty Japanese wife, and a Japanese mother-in-law and an English nanny.
They all got on to the flight with me and occupied seven seats. Each child, even the babe in arms, had one for himself. That’s seven seats in Business Class. They then proceeded to hand each child a chicken drumstick from a box which kept them occupied throughout the flight even as the rest of us ate Jet Air service.
If this was being different enough there was more: at the end of the flight an attendant from Economy Class arrived to help them disembark!
How the rich travel: The other day, while travelling to the suburbs, I was caught in traffic alongside this couple in a shiny huge Mercedes, with the lights on in the car — watching cartoons on the LCD screens opposite them!
And there’s this wealthy industrialist who travels in First Class with his wife and kids in economy!
Yes sir, the rich are different from you and me — and never is it more apparent than when they travel!