Ratan Tata has always been vocal about his grandmother Navajbai Tata's influence and how she instilled in him the value of maintaining dignity. Tata spent his childhood with his grandmother after his parents divorced, which was uncommon in India then.
Though his grandmother gifted him a happy childhood, things weren't always easy as he faced "a fair bit of ragging and personal discomfort" about his parent's divorce, the chairman emeritus of Tata Group told Facebook page Humans of Bombay.
But, his grandmother was always at his side. He credited her for teaching him dignity. "Soon after when my mother remarried, the boys at school started saying all kinds of things about us—constantly and aggressively. But our grandmother taught us to retain dignity at all costs, a value that’s stayed with me until today," he said, on how he would walk away from such situations, which otherwise we would have fought back against."
Navajbai Tata was the first woman Director of Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata group. She was appointed a director in 1925 and held the position right until her demise in 1965. The widow of Jamsetji Tata's younger son, she was widowed in 1918 at the age of 41.
Also read: How Ratan Tata fell in love after college, and it fell apart during Indo-China war
She had also indulged in a lot of philanthropic work, especially for women. She provided employment for poor women, training them to earn their own living in cookery, hand embroidery, tailoring and laundry divisions.
It was Navajbai Tata who lured Ratan Tata back to India. Tata was already working in the US and loving life in Los Angeles when his grandmother fell ill.
The industrialist once opened up to Karan Thapar about how his grandmother would call him wanting to see him. "My grandmother brought me back, she was old, she was ailing and she wanted to see me again and she appealed to me. In those days, even telephone calls were hard, you know you had to book a call and they weren't an everyday thing and she appealed to me and it touched me so I went back," said Ratan Tata.
Ratan Tata never planned on staying in India but once he arrived, he decided this was where he belonged.