Ta Ta ‘Anmol’ Ratan

Bhubaneswar: (Ajoy Kumar Misra) The country continues to mourn the death of Chairman Emeritus of the world renowned Tata group of companies Ratan Tata even after five days as he was not an individual but an icon. His simplicity and humility continues to inspire a large section of the people in the country.
Talking about the great human without narrating stories of his humility is an incomplete exercise. The great soul has so many stories to be narrated. He was not only an industrialist but a subject of research. May be some day someone or many persons will come up with more stories about him. The social media has been reeling out a lot of stories on Ratan Tata.
In the sixteenth Century the Parsees came to India to escape the brutality meted out to them in Iran. They landed in the Kutchh region of Gujarat. The Locals were worried with the influx because of their language, food habbits, culture and traditions. But the Parsees assured the local population that they will not be influencing the local culture or tradition but will mingle with them in due course. That happened also. The funeral of Ratan Tata and few others earlier is the example.
Parsees are never cremated or buried. Their bodies are left in an open field to be devoured by kites and wild animals.
Though Ratan Tata never left a will on his funeral, it is apparent that he wanted to merge in the culture of country of adoption.
Ratan Tata is also known to have avenged sweetly a humiliation heaped on him nearly 25 years ago by an American company. When Tata’s passenger car unit was facing crisis, Ratan Tata had approached the Ford company for a bailout. Ford had expressed reluctance to do so and informed that if they decide to bailout Tata’s passenger car unit, it would be a ‘Favour’ only. Ratan Tata never pursued the deal, But in 2008, he had the chance to bailout Ford from the ‘Jaguar Crisis’ which the company later admitted was ‘the greatest favour’ Ratan Tata extended to the American company.
Ratan Tata was keen to set up an aviation wing. He had approached three Governments under PV Narasimha Rao, Atal Behari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh. But his applications were rejected always on some ground or the other. It is said that during one government a bribe of Rs 15 crore was demanded for clearing the files. But this has not been verified so far though officials claimed that the rejection was on the basis of national security.
But, an undeterred Ratan Tata kept his options open till the government decided to divest Air India which was once Tata Air lines set up by JRD Tata.
He acquired the Air India and set the process in motion to merge it with Vistara Airlines which he had created in collaboration with the Singapore Airlines. However, he breathed his last before the process was complete.
Not mentioning about Shantanu Naidu—Ratan Tata’s ‘youngest friend’ would make the stories incomplete.
Ratan had met Naidu through a facebook post. Shantanu is a pet lover and had been trying to create some device to make the street dogs safe on the roads. He devised a ‘florescent’ collar to be worn by the street dogs and remain safe during the nights. Ratan Tata was so impressed with the efforts of the young engineer and writer that he chose to join hands with him for the protection of street animals. Ratan Tata had also adopted a street dog, influenced by Shantanu.