Do you believe in God? I asked Ratan Tata at our first private meeting without aides and PR claptrap.
He had agreed to meet me in the winter of 2012, 11 months after writing a touching note on how he appreciated my newspaper FINANCIAL Chronicle as "refreshingly different."
There will be no interview, he had insisted, I would like to know you first. I agreed. I would like to know you too, I had said ahead of our meeting.
"Parsees are not known to believe in God. They worship fire. They are kind of agnostic, if not atheist. Do you believe in God?" I asked as a conversation opener in his rather spartan third floor corner room office in Elphinstone Building on Mumbai's Veer Nariman Road, where he had shifted recently vacating the Tata Group Chairman's ornate office in Bombay House for Cyrus Mistry.
Mr Tata looked me in the eye, perhaps, not expecting such an audacious question from a person who had made a career reporting business.
Well, I know of media barons who camp for months at Haridwar in pursuit of God. And then they come back and mistreat their employees to run corrupt businesses. I can't say about God, but I learnt one thing from my grandmother when I was a child. She told me, 'Whatever you do in life, child, do it with purity of purpose."
I believe I understood Mr Tata. His grandma's advice has stayed with me eversince.
"Parsees, don't really count themselves as Indians, but as long time guests in India. They have a sense of belonging with ancient Persia. And now, you have a vast global business. Do you think of yourself as an Indian, or more as a world citizen, a universal man?" I had widened my territorial space.
Mr Tata ignored my question, without a hint on his face.
So I asked him the next. "You have stayed a bachelor for far too long. Didn't you ever fall in love?"
"I did once," he said, "but it didn't work."
Before long, our conversation meandered to the other bachelor boy, Rahul Gandhi, still the Congress Party's big hope for the future of India, without anybody having a clue yet, of Narendra Modi planning a coup against his own party's future from the past, the national election still a year-and-a-half away.
I can't quite remember exacty what Mr Tata had to say, and I won't put words into the mouth of the departed soul, but I clearly remember his demeanour was as if Gandhi Minor was a good for nothing fellow, taken to pointless sho-sha.
"But then, you attended the investor's conference in Srinagar, that Rahul recently hosted, to get the Kashmiris to turbo-charge the Indian economy," I wondered aloud.
"What could I do? You cannot say no to the ruler. I have an Empire to protect. I had to be there." Mr Tata replied. The power of his statement not lost on me.
"You can't say no to the ruler."
"I have an Empire to protect."
Ruler.
Empire.
Can't.
No.
Rahul Gandhi.
DEMOCRACY?
We carried on... till our conversation turned to my "refreshingly different" and fledgling newspaper, and his long lost venerable print establishment.
We were already in dire straits then, my media baron in prison, after a massive bank default competing with liquor baron Vijay Mallya's for scale of fraud.
There were 2,500 journalists and other employees staring at closure, their wages dripping in installments. Staying 'refreshingly different' without journalistic compromises was becoming a nightmare.
"Why don't you bail us out. Why don't you buy out my team?" I wasn't yet pleading.
Just making an offer. To regroup and rebrand our Herculean journalistic effort under his banner.
"We had a great newspaper, once upon a time. The Statesman. I was a young man then. JRD Tata was in control. We lost that great paper during the (Indira Gandhi's) Emergency in 1977, because the editors took on the government. And we didn't interfere with editorial freedom. I didn't want to lose that paper. But we faced a lot of trouble. So, JRD decided it was best to give it up."
Though I don't quite remember if he blamed anyone in the group for that loss, and separation, he did mention that Nani Palkhivala had something to do with it.
"I have often thought of venturing into the media business. But there is no consensus in the group. Because, if we were to get back into the media business, I would want it to serve the purpose of our group. Or why else should we invest... And you..." Mr Tata left it at that.
But then, seeing disappointment painted all over my face, Mr Tata came back..."We have an advertisement chest of Rs 80 crore (800 million rupees) a year, and we are not spending enough of that. We have stopped advertising in The Times of India. May be, you could take all of that money. Why don't you ask your marketing managers to get in touch with our advertising team. I will leave a word..."
Half-heartedly, I returned to Delhi, picked up the phone and called my publisher who was now out of jail on leash. "There's 80 crore for the asking. Can you ask the marketing manager to get in touch with them?"
There was a sigh and a hush at the other end of the phone. The marketing boss had been pushed out because of unpaid wages, and to save on running the press as long as they could.
A year later, in winter fog, I flew out of Delhi for Elphinstone Building once more. I had to take the 10 am flight out, after attending to my mother at the ICU at Artemis, I had told Dilnaz, personal assistant to Mr Tata. So the meeting was fixed for 3 pm. But as God would have wanted, the weather played truant, and my flight took off well past noon to touch down at Mumbai at half past 3.
"Don't worry, just take a cab, he will be here till 5," Dilnaz assured after I told her I could not stay back that night to meet Mr Tata the next morning.
Finally, pushing through Mumbai's rush hour, I reached Elphinstone at half-past six, my PPT printout in hand.
Mr Tata was waiting.
He walked across to open the door, and offered a chair to sit up close face to face with him.
I was asking for Rs 10 crore (100 million) upfront, with a 10 per cent mark up every year for the next five, to gather the best team and technology around, with an incubating lab for digital media in one of the IITs. I had my team listed, with some of the finest journalists in business waiting to sign up. And an IIT faculty in wait.
I thrust the sheaf of paper into Mr Tata's hands, giving him no choice.
'You don't give up!" he said, looking helpless.
'I spoke to our senior executives, but haven't got them to nod for you," he sounded sorry, "because once you get into this business, you can't go against the government. May be you could rope in other investors, and we could get involved without directly promoting your paper."
But I don't need Tata. I only need you. You are no longer with the Tata group. Just come along with me alone. With out of pocket expenses," I said.
Be my Angel!
Mr Tata's eyes sparkled.
And then he said, "Let me tell you this, when you are at the top, you are all alone. Do not trust another man. Not even the person only next to you."
He didn't say another word till he walked me afffectionafely to the door.
I had been audacious enough asking for a hundred million rupees in hard cash knowing well that "angels" typically invested one per cent of that amount in Indian start-ups.
That was the last time we met. In person. Without supporting staff. Without corpcomm. Without PR claptrap.
Late that night I returned to Delhi, to be by my mother in ICU on a cold winter night.
Close to a year later, Mr Ratan Tata started his innings as a serial angel investor, sinking an undisclosed amount in Gurgaon e-commerce start-up Snapdeal. And a clutch of would-be unicorns later.
I kept in touch every now and then via email. The last he wrote to me was a month into my exit from the newspaper I had crafted and anchored for eight long years:
"Dear Mr. Roy,
Thank you for your email.
I appreciate your informing me that you are no longer with Financial Chronicle. Please accept my best wishes in all your future endeavours."
Yesterday, driving back home from my bank in DC, thinking of the cash in my wallet, my mind suddenly raced to my "venturing out" with Mr Tata.
I smiled to myself.
When I returned home, a former colleague had posted about Mr Tata's venture into the great unknown beyond.
Bye-bye Tata!
Adieu angel!
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