A frosty start featuring ‘ULFA tapes’, thawed by a love of dogs. My conversations with Ratan Tata

Besides politics, his frustrations with business environment & inspirational ideas ranging from entrepreneurship to technology, aviation, philanthropy, we discovered a common passion: dogs

Ratan Tata with his dog, Tito | Fawzan Husain

When ThePrint was born seven years ago, Ratan Tata was one of its first two backers. It was an act of long-held trust, respect, friendship and most importantly, a shared belief that good, unhyphenated journalism is a larger common good. That’s why his passing is a tragedy that’s both institutional for ThePrint, and personal for me.

This equation, however, hadn’t started exactly on an ideal note. In October 1997, when I was still a relatively new editor at The Indian Express, its investigative bureau chief Ritu Sarin, who I might sometimes adoringly call a smiling assassin, walked in somewhat breathless, holding a couple of cassette tapes. This was the pre-digital era. “Isko suno,” (hear these) she said, a mega scoop written all over her face.

These were recorded phone conversations between some top Tata group executives, industrialist Nusli Wadia talking on their behalf, some senior central officials, Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw (then a Tata group director) and several others. These were about helping the Tatas have some hostages released by Assam’s insurgent group ULFA, and also to ‘negotiate’ peace between the outfit and Tata Tea, to ensure the safety of the executives on its gardens in Assam. 

The story caused a stir and infuriated the Tatas and Ratan Tata himself. The many friends of the Tatas and Nusli Wadia himself appeared on TV channels to call the paper, and its editor, irresponsible. The I.K. Gujral government ordered an inquiry into who might have tapped these phones but it yielded nothing. The case died, but a chill remained between the Tata Group and the paper I edited.

The thaw came from the usual reporter’s luck. Sometime in the summer of 1998, I was returning from a morning run to the Tata (Taj Group)-owned Lexington Hotel in New York when a familiar American voice called out to me. It was Frank Wisner, until the previous year the US ambassador to India. And who was his breakfast date, but Ratan Tata. He introduced me to Tata in his usual effusive and generously complimentary manner. It was the first time I had met Ratan Tata. There was no conversation except a handshake and an exchange of awkward smiles.

Then, two days later, as I stood in the line to check out, I found Tata ahead of me, or sort of. The hotel staff had collected to give him a send-off and a group photo. Some luck, I thought. We will now be on the same Air India flight. “See you on the flight,” I said, “I am also flying Air India.” 

“But I am on BA,” he said. “Why would Mr Tata not be flying Air India?” I asked. “I will, when we are running that airline again,” he said. I wished him well and we exchanged more smiles.

Some months later, I got a call from his office to ask if I’d join him for lunch in Mumbai. The lunch was in a private room at the Taj in Mumbai and there was no mention of the ‘Tapes’ story. Besides the usual politics, his frustrations with the business environment and inspirational ideas ranging from entrepreneurship to technology, aviation and philanthropy, we discovered a common passion: dogs. All the serendipitous meetings, handshakes and smiles apart, it is the dogs that brought about that thaw.

We met often now, and dogs always came up in our conversations. He sent me a signed copy of the picture in his room: his favourite dog Tito, with a ball in its mouth, looking adoringly at Tata.

In one of these conversations, he talked with immense emotion about a book he had just read: The Art of Racing in the Rain. Published in 2008 and written by Garth Stein, it is the story of a Formula 1 racing car driver, Denny, and his Golden Retriever, Enzo, and their incredible love that transcends marriage, the arrival of a child, accidents and death. Death, because the dog has watched a Mongolian documentary that said dogs reincarnate into men. The story in the book is narrated entirely by ‘Enzo’ as if he were human. Tata’s eyes would mist over often when talking about it. He remembered lines from it, Enzo’s lines. He followed that conversation by sending me a copy of the book with a very warm note to a fellow dog lover. The book was made into a Hollywood film in 2019.

In these conversations, I discovered how strongly he felt about dogs and other animal life. His own, and animals in general, especially those on the street.

As for his own, his Tito wrecked a leg and he flew him in his private plane to a hospital in the American Midwest specialising in bone transplants. He was heartbroken when the surgery failed and the dog died. You’ve been reading about the stray dogs he allowed in the Tata Sons headquarters, his small animal hospital and the stories of him collecting leftover food from the Taj and driving through the streets of Colaba at night to feed it to stray dogs. They’re all true. At Tata Sons headquarters now, a sizeable room and facility has been created for the ‘strays’ by the side of the staircase at the entrance.

Nothing made him more furious than stories of people treating animals badly. He had a particular beef over this with the Navy officers and their families in whose neighbourhood in Colaba he lived. “Why do they treat street dogs so badly, why do they hit them, want to banish them? All they need is some food, love and respect; they will give you much more in return and be no nuisance whatsoever. Why can’t people understand that?”

Other things frustrated him also. Like the lack of transparency and norms in the way our government worked with the corporate sector. In the course of time, we recorded two episodes of Walk The Talk for NDTV, about seven years apart. The first was at the Tata Motors plant in Pune and we recorded a part of it in his new Indica, of course his bespoke version with the roof cutaway. He did talk in this one about deals still being cut in dark New Delhi corridors at 11 PM even so many years after economic reform.

The next, in 2010 was more edgy, deeply political and headline-worthy. This is when the Tatas were facing the Radia Tapes heat and he sought me out to open up. Please see the video and read its edited transcript. Of course, you can toss all of the good things he says about me and the quality of our journalism as mere generosity from one dog lover to another. But listen to some of the things he said. Of how he feared if rules were not followed, if so much discretion floated in the system, and of course if people’s phones could be tapped so freely and leaked selectively, India was in danger of becoming a “banana republic.” He added, “I do not use that term lightly.”

“Banana republics”, he said, run on cronyism. “People of great power wield great power, people of lesser power or people who’ve fallen out of power go to jail without adequate evidence or their bodies are found in the trunks of cars. The danger is that you could degenerate into that kind of atmosphere….” He was hurting at this point.

Around the same time, I was asked by TIE, or what used to be called The Indus Entrepreneurs, to do a conversation on leadership between Ratan Tata and N.R. Narayana Murthy. It was a masterclass and both opened up to talk freely as grown-up, successful people do not often do in public. A link of that conversation is available and shared here. 

Another conversation I chaired on 1 June, 2012 in Bengaluru was hosted by the Gates Foundation and included Ratan Tata, Bill Gates, Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw. It was in some of our conversations that Tata suggested I strike out on my own and if I did so, he would be there with an initial investment. It was small, very tiny, like pocket change by his standards. For us at ThePrint, it was an invaluable vote of confidence. All the more reason we will miss one of the greatest builders of modern India.