Maharajah's airs and graces

It’s unfashionable now to endorse anything Donald Trump ever said. But J R D Tata might not have disagreed when the fallen US president turned round one of Bobby Kooka’s immortal slogans (“There’s an air about India”) to denounce India’s air as “filthy”. Tata thought much the same ever since Air India’s nationalisation meant his ouster from the airline’s board. Unsurprisingly, the connection occurred to me on a recent non-stop 11-hour Kolkata-London flight for which Air India charged Rs 1,69,913 and during which it dumped just two cardboard boxes of dry food (breakfast and lunch) before us by way of

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