'Ratan Made You Feel Special'

'He had a lovely, lovely, sense of humour, very subdued and very, very subtle, but it was very, very, prominent.'

Halekai or Home By The Sea was the name of the tidy little bungalow, tucked away in a quiet corner of Colaba, south Mumbai, where Ratan Tata lived after retirement, with his German shepherds and house help, although he was known to answer his own door and phone.

It was architect Ratan J Batliboi, head of the architectural firm Ratan J Batliboi Consultants Private Ltd, who helped Tata design it and bring his visions for the home to fruition.

In the process -- as they argued and thrashed out the desired thickness of the surfaces in the house or colour schemes -- they got thrown together for long periods of time and Batliboi emerged from the stint a firm RNT fan and friend.

News of Tata's illness and being "very unwell" filtered in to Batliboi over the last day-and-a-half and it was with great trepidation that he began to process the information that the gent he sometimes called champ may be no more.

And Batliboi was in shock: "I sort of was in disbelief at the beginning."

He didn't attend the funeral, preferring to remember Tata quietly at home, sifting the best of memories:

I haven't spoken to him for a very long time. I've been in touch with his staff asking to talk to him, and every time we fix up a time, he's unwell or he's not able to meet, so it's been quite a while.

The last time we met was very long back. I don't even remember. I had just gone over to the house to say hi, probably years ago. It wasn't in the recent past.

Everything that everybody says about him is true. He was a beautiful human being. What is very exciting is that his gentlemanliness, his upbringing and his humility came through to the point where he'd open a door for you and let you walk out first -- that kind of thing -- whoever you were.

I remember him sitting in the front seat of m ycar with my driver and saying, 'Thank you very much', to my driver for dropping him from this point to that point in his estate. That's the kind of man he was.

He was continually excited about stuff. He was listening -- he was a listener -- and he assimilated everything that he heard.

He was very excited about technology and all that he was hearing and being exposed to.

He also was in a position to invest in a lot of startups and (the like).

His education as an architect gave him a design sensitivity and sensibility.

He looked at every problem and saw a problem that needed a solution, and would approach it through critical and design thinking, very holistic thinking, very lateral thinking, which was rather (stimulating).

He'd love a challenge, and he'd try and sort it out. (But if he was wrong) he had the humility to call back and say, 'Listen, maybe you were right'.

We had a lot of lovely arguments like that. And I'd come home after spending three hours at his home with him and I'd receive a call at 10 in the evening, saying, 'Hey, maybe we can do it your way, and it'll look good'. Those were lovely times that we spent.

"He was also very pragmatic in terms of not overdoing technology for the sake of technology," Ratan Batliboi tells Vaihayasi Pande Daniel/Rediff.com.

It's a humility that grew out of his compassion and from loving even 'lower' creatures?

Absolutely. His compassion came through, for every living creature. He had so much love for humans. His (love of) dogs was obvious.

He looked at dogs (in a manner) that everybody at Bombay House (the Tata headquarters) would get really upset about, because stray dogs were lying all around the lobbies, which was finally done in Italian marble.

And nobody would dare to do anything because Ratan Tata had allowed them in.

There are a lot of stories about him and his dogs, Tito and Tango, and how they were really loved by him and how obviously they loved him back.

One has heard several amusing tales, like how he got in the pool and invited his executives to join him in the water with the dogs and they would look a little bit non-plussed.

I know about the pool because it was designed and I know about him getting into the pool, but I don't know about him asking executives into the pool (laughs)!

Yes, he did make a pool so the dogs got exercised the way they were expected to when they were not keeping too well.

After the house project was done, how often were you able to catch up with him and share special moments?

I'd say hello to him. I respected his time and his desire to be on his own, or because he was preoccupied with many other things, but we would very warmly catch up on his birthday to say hello and stuff like that.

It was a lovely relationship that I had. It wasn't a relationship of equals, obviously, but he made you feel special, and I knew that he was very special...so that's the way it went.

What will you miss most?

I am in shock. When I heard about this at midnight and in fact till 1 o'clock I was just messaging with all the people (who had been) in touch (with him).

Everybody was awake. Everybody was sort of sharing their love and affection and that we had lost a good friend and a great human being.

There were lots of conversations in my mind that I wanted to have with him which have remained unsaid. Just things that he wanted to do.

For example, he was building his own new house. He wanted to start his own architecture studio in his home.

In fact, we almost slotted out a space in his home where he wanted to put up a board and start drawing and stuff like that.

I just felt like you know teasing him and saying, 'Boss, did you do it finally?'

He was continually plugged in. He'd be listening to lots of new ideas and lots of new materials, and he was very, very, very, engaged with everything he heard about.

Would you describe him as a philosophical person or religious person? Did you see glimmers of that?

I don't think philosophy or religion or even spiritualism -- I mean, one would expect that a 75, 80, 85 year old would go towards spirituality and stuff like that.

But he was very practical, extremely pragmatic, both feet on the ground, completely with it.

He was also very pragmatic in terms of not overdoing technology for the sake of technology.

He was very sensitive. For example, so that his dogs didn't go through the glass windows of his house, he was interested in putting some sort of graphic at the dog's eye level -- it would prevent them from bashing their heads into the glass.

So not a dreamy type of person?

Very, very, practical. On the couple of occasions when he heard the price of a simple, stupid false ceiling, he'd say, 'Oh, oh, my God, I don't think we should do a false ceiling'.

Then we realised we shouldn't talk to him about any pricing because if he knew his car went for a 300 km ride or run to get something from somewhere, he wouldn't have appreciated that.

Was he an emotional man?

He was calm and cool and collected. He was extremely sensitive is clearly what my reading is. Introverted, not overly social.

Loved his food. Everything that was served to us during evening meetings he ate with relish and he enjoyed it thoroughly.

He loved fresh flowers coming to his home every morning.

There were some beautiful, very, very, exciting aspects of his humanism.

He was a music lover and listened to a lot of music -- jazz.

I exchanged CDs with him. He was a great music buff. And a great film buff. He watched a lot of television and films and videos and DVDs.

I'm not sure what he was watching. I was never into his watch list, but I knew that he would sink back into his little TV spot and watch films. He had a good collection.

He had a fabulous library -- one of the rooms was a library -- and he had a lovely collection of books.

You would expect that he would do a room full of his awards and his frames and all his citations.

But those are the things that you sort of didn't see happening.

He must have been revered by his help?

Absolutely. I haven't connected with the staff yet. I've just sent them all messages last night. But I think they must be just over-awed with everything that's happening and the huge loss.

They haven't responded. I'm going to connect with them at some point.

What have people asked you about him?

A lot of people have written to me and paid condolences to me, like I've lost a very close family friend.

I feel I had a lovely connection with him. They knew that I had a relationship and they knew that he was my mentor and friend and we shared a lot of interesting evenings together and built stuff together, which is a completely different feeling.

It is always interesting to discover how much respect the man on the street had for him.

He was a household name for reasons not connected to his wealth, his power, but for his generosity, his philanthropy, his humanness. That's what they knew him as.

He didn't have 12 cars of security before and after him. He'd drive on his own at some points.

He'd go out for drives with the staff in the house or the dogs.

It wasn't like a pretentious 'I have to have a Maybach to do this and I have to have a Rolls Royce to go in the evenings for that'.

It was just passion-driven stuff.

We just would have a great time. When I was talking to somebody or somebody was talking to me and they'd quote 'Ratan said this' and (I would say to him), 'How the hell do I define that it was you they were talking about. Or it was me that they were talking about'.

He'd say, 'I think I should call you Ratan I and I'll call myself Ratan II'.

I said, 'Boss, I mean, how can you even think like that? You know, you are the Ratan I'. We joked about that.

He had a lovely, lovely, sense of humour, very subdued and very, very subtle, but it was very, very, prominent.

I had a (connection) with him, where we could joke about (much).

I didn't have to have my guard up. I'd address him as chief, boss, champ, RNT.

The very fact that he was who he was allowed you to take that liberty.... I would never otherwise show that kind of familiarity with anybody else.

And did he ever speak to you about any controversial issues? Or he was very private in that sense?

We didn't talk politics. We didn't talk general, existential, stuff.

We just talked about very practical stuff. Like 'How will you put up 200 ties?' and 'Where will you store my clothes?' And how can we redesign this to make it more attractive?

And probe into his lifestyle and how he chose his outfits to wear or where he sat at the table to eat.

Or why he wanted a specific red colour in his house; and we went crazy trying to get that from all over the world. He knew his mind.

I guess had I engaged him in deep talk, I'm sure he would have engaged. But it was much more fun talking about Miriam Makeba and how she was singing here or there, or how the latest jazz show had such and such happening.

And he'd sort of go back into... 'When I was in America, this is what I saw...' stuff like that.

You will be remembering him in your own way today (Thursday)?

Every minute of today I've just been thinking about him and talking to my friends, and they've been sending me messages and photographs.

• FAREWELL, Mr TATA

Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff.com