This is from 17 July 25
Something caught my eye when I was walking down a quiet Bandra lane this evening.
It was a shop with a flour crushing machine in it. I saw an elderly man taking sacks of whole wheat and emptying them into the mill and then going to the other end to take out the flour.
I was suddenly transported from Bandra in 1925 to Bansdroni in 1990 when my mother would send me with wholewheat bought from the grocers to the shop on the main road where they crushed wheat into flour. The shop was run by a stout gent who would wear a lungi and a sleeveless vest. His face, hair, moustache and arms would be covered in white. As if he was snowman working in the sweltering heat.
I remembered the neatly packed white paper bag of flour that he would give us. The bag would be warm and you could smell the freshly milled flour.
I think that the flour cost Rs 5 a kilo in 1990.
I decided to ask ChatGPT about the price of flour ground in shops in Calcutta, as it was then called, in 1990.
This is what it had to say, ‘In 1990, the cost of 1 kg of ground whole wheat flour (atta) in Kolkata would have typically ranged between ₹4 to ₹6 per kilo, depending on the source (local chakki vs branded), location, and quality.’
Not bad huh for a guy who cannot even remember the rate interest of his investments?
Talking of investments, I checked the price at aata in the 1 kilo pack of aata that we had ordered in this evening. It’s Rs 61. Anyone care to the math and compare the increase with that in the sensex in the same period?
