Even after realizing that the prices are always commensurate with people’s earnings in general, it is difficult for the elderly not to compare ‘the good old days’ with the present, where everything seems ‘expensive’.
My father, for example, got a monthly pension of Rs 7 a month, sufficient to have even pure ghee with meals.
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Years later, the highest ticket for a film at a cinema house was priced at Rs 5 and petrol was available for Rs 5 a litre. Restaurants gave meals twice a day for a month for Rs 30, including feasts on Sundays. The minimum fare on city buses was five paise and a ride from the railway station to my college cost 15 paise.
As the cost of a bicycle, about Rs 200, was considered too large to be paid in a lump sum, I got one under the hire purchase scheme after providing two sureties, and a company representative verified the details of my employment by visiting my office.
There were hardly any pre-packed items, and we bought even cooking oil loose from our regular grocery shop. There was an evening market in the village, where small fish were not counted, but handfuls were dumped into the baskets.
Recently, I was shocked to know how much a barber charges for a haircut. It was no longer a hair-cutting salon but a ‘beauty parlour’ with a separate section for women. There was a waiting crowd of males and females, and the owner behaved as if he was doing a favour to his customers.
I then remembered the barber who used to visit our home to shave the face or cut the hair of the male members. His wages were paid in kind after paddy was harvested.
The washerman and other service providers were also paid in kind after the bi-annual paddy harvests. Every house used to have a storage space called ‘nilavira’ at the centre of the house for storing paddy for the whole year. When I became a college lecturer in the 1960s on the UGC scale of Rs 300 to 600 per month, it was considered high.
My grandchildren, aware of my habit of exclaiming at the price, remove the price tags from readymade dresses before showing them to me. How much do you get as a pension, and what was your salary in the beginning, they would ask, making me shut my mouth about the past.
When I was told that the average daily wages of even unskilled labourers, mostly from other states, hovered around Rs 1000 in Kerala, I thought of the traditional coconut tree climbers and other workers who were paid nothing but a part of the nuts they harvested as wages. Due to the high wages, most rice fields are now lying uncultivated, and even coconuts are picked only when the dry ones fall from the trees. It is another matter that people have taken the high price in their stride. Even the shops selling gold ornaments, whose price is said to be sky-high, are always overcrowded.
Having realized the relevance of the saying, “When the past comes knocking, don’t answer. It has nothing new to tell you,”I refrain, with difficulty, from referring to the bygone days.
