The Hindu Business Line : When Ratan Tata shopped for curtains

Shopping in Mumbai for a wedding in the family, my mother and I, who live in Chennai, ended up at our favourite store fabindia in Colaba. Lost in the colonial-styled store, and draping a beautiful khadi silk duppatta on me, I receive a rough nudge from my mother. “Oh, I am just trying it on, I am not going to buy,” I protested. She nudged again and whispered in an ecstatic tone: “Look, who is here. Fast!” Hoping against hope that it wasn’t ano ther boring relative who would invite us for dinner , I turned around.

“It’s Ratan Tata. Look,” my mother said. And there he was; in a red and blue chequered shirt, the Chairman of the Tata group. I gaped and was awestruck by the dignity and elegance of his bearing. My mother of course decided to ignore her age and resembled a five-year old. “Good afternoon, I am so pleased to see you, sir!” she exclaimed as he glided up the stairs to the first floor to the furnishing section.

Even as I feared he might not welcome this intrusion, he said “Good afternoooon!”, and flashed his distinguished smile, before vanishing into the huge store. I was awed and my mother was dumbstruck. “It is just like the deep voice we hear on TV. Wow!” she said, still in a state of stupor.

A thousand questions crossed the mind. How did he manage to appear so calm when there must be thousand things on his mind? What does the Chairman of Rs 97,000 crore Tata Group do to relax? Does he usually shop all by himself? Why fabindia in spite of a Westside just round the corner? But of course the last thing he would want was to be disturbed by a journalist.

Agonising over such thoughts, I realised that my mother was not around. As soon I spotted her, exasperated she said, “I cannot find him.” Flashing her new two-mega pixel camera phone, she urged, “I want a photo with him. Please, will you take one?” Seemed liked we had switched roles! I put my foot down. “He is here on a personal visit. It will be an intrusion into his privacy. No one does stuff like this… not to a gentleman like him,” I reasoned.

Our verbal tug-of-war continued, and he passed us by again as he came out of the furnishings section. We gaped at him once again, and after he had left the store, my mother gushed: “Oh, I love his personality. At 70, he is elegance personified. I have invested in Tata Steel too; he is my real hero.”

Back in Chennai, apart from narrating excess baggage woes and the exasperating Mumbai traffic, we said: “And, guess what? We saw Ratan Tata. He was shopping at fabindia for his curtains!” As I narrated this incident to my assistant editor, over a cup of coffee in the canteen, with a twinkle in her eye, she sighed: “Wow, what a personality!”