By Satya Narayan Misra*

Ratan Tata was part of the HAL Board as an unofficial member when I was the government nominee. He used to attend the Board meetings intermittently but never missed the meeting to finalize the budget. He would ask pointed questions on HAL’s high inventory levels and huge reserves and surpluses which was not due to HAL’s profitability but due to the huge funds parked by the Ministry of Defence to avoid surrender of funds. During the height of the US financial crisis, he stumped all of us by suggesting why HAL is not giving funds to the Tatas on commercial paper. I asked him once, how he was so sound with budgeting, though he passed from Cornell with a degree in architecture, he said it was part of the DNA of Parsees, how to be parsimonious and indulge in philanthropy at the same time! When he spoke, the whole Board listened with rapt silence. 

But my abiding memory of the man was his love for cashew nuts and dogs, not necessarily in that order. His gentle fingers would scour through the cashews and in no time they would be finished. Sitting right across, I would push my plate and beckon the waiter to replenish them quickly, as HAL had enough reserves & surplus! He will smile & mumble Thank You. Cashew was my connection with him. Generally reticent and loathe to pontificate he asked me if I had read Garth Stein’s masterpiece The Art of Racing in the Rain. Though I am a mad dog lover I had not read it. It has a heart-tugging storyline, the perfect book for anyone who knows that compassion is not only for humans. And that the relationship between two souls who are meant for each other never really comes to an end. It looks at the wonders and absurdities of human life, only a dog could tell. No wonder, he refused to go to London for an award because his dog was sick.

He had his dark side as well. He could be ruthlessly firm, the way he ended the strike in Telco and finished the career of Rajan Nair, the labor leader. Cyrus Mistry was reported to have commented on his interference in operational decision-making. There was also a translucent side to him as recounted by the late Vinod Mehta in his book Lucknow Boy: A Memoir, about his association with Nina Wadia, a political lobbyist in Radia tapes. He also regrets that his pet project to build a safe and affordable car for the middle class was caught in the whirlpool of a perception that it was ‘cheap’. Despite these mild scars in his imposing personality, he was a visionary par excellence, for whom the world was his oyster, a truly global person as Tagore envisioned, and a philanthropist who leaves behind innumerable trusts to help the vulnerable.  

On Antilia, which was valued at $4.6 billion in 2023, Ratan Tata had observed “The person who lives there should be concerned about what he sees around him and asking how he can make a difference”. He was pathologically against ostentation of any kind. He wrote “Retirement is not about playing golf or reading on a beach while sipping a cocktail. From affordable treatment to making the lives of rural India easier – I am looking forward to making it happen at Tata Trust “. JRD leaves behind a cultural cauldron in NCPA, a rare oasis of culture on the marine drive where the rich and hoi polloi serenade and can savor culture. I have seen him driving a Hero Honda, with dogs licking him all over. Like the cats who missed Martyona in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novella, it would be the dogs who will miss Ratan the most. For me, he was like a flickering glow, a gentleman with a dimpled face, an unostentatious billionaire who munched cashew nuts with gay abandon! He had once famously said: Leave the advice & do the right thing, even if it is not the easiest thing to do. Gandhi once said: When in doubt, a little voice tells me, do not look right or left, follow the straight path. There was a Gandhian in him who cared for the poor and charted the right path.

 

 

*The author is Professor Emeritus, KiiT University.

 

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not in any way represent the views of Sambad English.