'Values stayed with me': How Ratan Tata's grandmother shaped the inspiring man he became

Ratan Tata

Ratan Tata once spoke candidly about his childhood, parents' divorce, grandmother and his marriage plans during an interview in 2020. The former chairman of Tata Sons passed away at a Mumbai hospital on Wednesday night. The Padma Vibhushan recipient had been in the hospital's ICU since Monday.

“I had a happy childhood, but as my brother and I grew older, we experienced quite a bit of ragging and personal discomfort because of our parents’ divorce, which in those days wasn’t as common as it is today," Ratan Tata shared in a 2020 interview with Humans of Bombay.

His grandmother, Navajbai Tata, played a pivotal role in his life. “My grandmother raised us in every way. Shortly after my mother remarried, boys at school started saying all kinds of things about us—constantly and aggressively. But our grandmother taught us to maintain our dignity at all costs, a value that has stayed with me to this day.”

Speaking about his education, and a satisfying job in the US, Tata shared how he "almost got married" with a woman he liked.

Tata told Humans of Bombay that after acquiring a BS in architecture from Cornell University, New York, in 1962, he got a nice job in the US, and fell in love with a woman there.

“After college, I landed a job at an architecture firm in LA, where I worked for two years. It was a great time -- the weather was beautiful, I had my own car and I loved my job. It was in LA that I fell in love and almost got married. But at the same time I had made the decision to move back at least temporarily since I had been away from my grandmother who wasn’t keeping too well for almost 7 years,” he told Humans of Bombay.

"So I came back to visit her and thought that the person I wanted to marry would come to India with me, but because of the 1962 Indo-China war her parent’s weren’t okay with her making the move anymore, and the relationship fell apart,” he added.