Big industrialists rarely open up about their personal life in the public sphere. They almost never put their personal opinions in the public forum but then we are taking about Rata Tata here. Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of Tata sons, who has over 1.1 million followers and only one follow, is quite expressive through his posts and reactions.
Speaking to a popular Facebook page, Humans of Bombay, Tata revealed details about personal life and how he "fell in love and almost got married" after his college days were over. The octogenarian industrialist also talked about the differences he had with his father. He opened up about his life after his parents' divorce, growing up with his grandmother, the values she taught him, studying at Cornell University and the reason the relationship eventually fell apart.
"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," he said.
In the first of a three-part series, Tata said that he had a happy childhood even though he and his brother faced a "fair bit of ragging because of his parents' divorce which in those days wasn’t as common as it is today."
His parents, Naval Tata and Sooni, got separated when he was young. Ratan Tata was raised by his grandmother Navajbai Tata.
The chairman of the Tata Trusts credits her grandmother for inculcating life values in him. He thanks his grandmother for teaching him to retain dignity at all costs.
"I still remember, after WW2, she took my brother and I for summer holidays to London. It was there that the values were really hammered in. She’d tell us, ‘don’t say this’ or ‘keep quiet about that’ and that’s where, ‘dignity above everything else’ really embedded in our minds," he said.