My conversations with Mr Ratan Tata

It was the time when plans were in the offing to develop the Nano. I expressed my fears about the prospect of every two-wheeler on the road being replaced by a small, affordable car – on our already overcrowded roads. This seemed catastrophic to me. Mr Tata said, “When, at a red light, you see a family getting drenched on a motorcycle, how do you feel? Doesn’t everybody have the right to travel in a car? Making better, wider roads is not my mandate.”

I had researched and written about a member of the Tata finance team who had committed suicide, after he was found guilty of some scandalous irregularities. The Tata team suggested that I avoid mentioning this in my book. But when I reasoned with Mr Tata that this incident actually only suggested that their values were set so high that a compromise was close to a lethal sin. It was, in fact, equivalent to the act of hara-kiri, an honourable exit to save personal disgrace, he immediately said that the point was well taken and the book should tell the truth.

Once, when the Maharashtra government had not yet renewed the Tata Power contract to supply electricity to the city of Bombay (now Mumbai), they had simply let the matter pass. A week before the city was threatened to been plunged into darkness, an angry Power Minister George Fernandez, summoned Naval Tata and asked, “Why have you not renewed this contract?” Naval Tata smiled and gestured by shuffling his fingers that someone had demanded a bribe for renewing this. The Tata team was embarrassed that if this information was published, it could embarrass their company with the government. But I reasoned that this had already been published in a book. And they were other similar delicate matters of which I had written. Mr Ratan Tata’s reaction was simply to say, “It is Aman‘s book, let him take the call.” Such trust and total empowerment was rare, especially in a commissioned book usually expected to be a hagiography.

Finally, when the book, Horizons - the Tata India Century, was released,Dr Irani called me to say, “What have you made of us?”  I thought I had committed some major blunder but he continued, “Our board is absolutely amazed with this wonder that you have created for us!” I was deeply relieved, “How modest can the Tatas be?”, I remember asking him over the phone. This humility is the legacy and hallmark of Mr Ratan Tata, right from the top to the bottom.

Later, Mr Tata, who had by then presented this book to many of the heads of the biggest global corporations, wrote about Horizons, in a book published by a friend: “Many have called it the best corporate book they have seen – and I certainly don’t have any in my library that can beat this publication.”

When I met Mr Tata for the last time, he walked-in very frail and shuffling his feet. He looked up and said, “Look what has become of me?” So, I replied, “Well, I suppose we all have to grow old.” To which he responded, “No, it’s the litigation.”

I really believed that lawyers would never be able to solve these problems entirely and that Mrs Patsy Mistry and Mr Tata should have met quietly. I was seeing her in four days over a lunch and she too was very frail. As the biographer of the Tata and Mistry families, in two fat tomes, I did believe that they could evoke enough goodwill to make this a great story for the future.

I messaged Dilnaz Gilder, the assistant of Mr Tata, to tell me her thoughts or speak to Mr Tata but she responded saying that he was in the hospital. The same evening, he was gone forever.

Mrs Mistry’s grudge had been that Ratan had not come to mourn for her husband’s bereavement, even though she had known him as a child. I reasoned with her that they were actively in court!  But with the passing away of Cyrus Mistry, things could hardly have got better, because the silences grew larger. He had said to me in a message that eventually ‘destiny will find its way’. My personal effort was to see that both the families come to an amicable agreement so that this page of history that will pass into posterity should not be black but white. I have still not given up hope.