RATAN TATA
A LIFE
HARPERCOLLINS
Price: ₹1,499
Pages: 712
1944 Childhood Lesson
Ratan’s parents had had a love marriage, a rarity in the socially conservative India and the equally traditional Parsi community of the pre-Independence era. But their whirlwind courting could not survive the normal vicissitudes of marriage and in 1944, they separated, with Soonoo moving to her parents’ house. Soonoo filed for divorce and it was a traumatic period for the children. Ratan was going on ten and Jimmy seven when they had to do many rounds of the family court. It was an ‘unpleasant’ and ‘hurtful’ experience, Ratan remembers. Soonoo eventually married Sir Jamsetji Jejeebhoy. Ratan says that separations or divorces did not happen ‘every day’ then as they do today. The rift between his parents was sensationalised and the details of their separation, both true and imagined, travelled fast. It became a topic of discussion in schools. Both Ratan and Jimmy were ‘ragged’ and humiliated in school by their peers.
1962 First Love
Interestingly, duringhe was wonderful [and] he was so polite’, she adds. But their relationship was short-lived.