TITAN WHO DARED TO DREAM BIG

Remembering the gentle giant who turned steel into dreams, cars into revolutions, and boardrooms into launching pads for India’s global ambitions, while redefining corporate philanthropy

-  M.G. Arun

Acolossus cannot be captured in a portrait, for he carries the landscape with him. Ratan Naval Tata could not only see into the distance but also attain to the wingspan required to reach there. He was also one who dared to compose dreams on an epic scale but knew how to symphonise all the nuances to turn them into material reality. Yet he always cloaked his greatness with a rare humility and compassion. “I would like to be remembered as a person who was responsible for some change in the way we look at things,” he said in a rare interaction with the media in 2021. And then he added, “As the innovator of something that people thought was unviable and not possible.”

Ratan Tata, 86, who died late evening on October 9 in Mumbai following age-related illness, was all that and much, much more. He had big shoes to fill when he took over the reins of the Tata Group from the illustrious J.R.D. Tata in 1991. Ratan was in awe of JRD and shared his interests in flying and electronics. He would say later, “Jeh (JRD) was an epitome of humility. He would stand in line to check in, drive his own car. What I learnt from him and have carried with me is a sense of justice that is always prevalent. He always did the right thing irrespective of how difficult it was and stood up for principles and stood by people.”

"People say I am soft but yet I get accused of pushing older people out, having dark sides, selling companies and doing all those things which are not soft"

-Ratan Tata, to INDIA TODAY, Feb. 24, 2003