Long-time associate S. A. Sabavala on the charisma that JRD exuded, his many passions, and the qualities that made him so extraordinary

There were three distinct phases of my life during which I was associated with J. R. D. Tata. The first, between 1967 and '70, was when I was his executive assistant. The second was between 1970 and '75, when I was a director of Tata Industries in Delhi. The last phase was in Mumbai, when I returned from my stint in Delhi and became a director of Tata Sons, working, for part of my tenure, closely with JRD.

I remember him in these three distinct phases for what he gave me. As his executive assistant, I was amazed at the amount of time and energy he was willing to spend teaching me what he thought I should know. For instance, he taught me how to read a company's balance sheet. He got me interested in figures, something that, up until then, I did not like at all. Also, he taught me the real value of money and, most important of all, I learned that details are vital, even the most minute of them. For JRD, perfection was the key.

He was almost fanatical about cleanliness and tidiness in the office (I saw him, on occasion, instructing sweepers how to clean the carpet). While preparing a speech he would often get to a third draft, polishing the language, the structure of the language, the thought behind the language, until his staff was driven to distraction.

JRD wrote and spoke very well and I always thought that his first draft, his original thoughts as he put them down, were the best. I frequently complained to him that he spoiled things by diluting them, by making too many corrections and by probing too deep into his original thoughts, which by then would have lost some of its freshness. Many of his important speeches were sent out to his fellow directors for their comments. He would often want to incorporate some of these comments, thereby watering down what was a good, strong first speech.

JRD was interested in doing things with his hands. No one who came to see him was safe from his inquisitiveness, particularly if you had a new watch on your wrist or a new piece of jewellery around your neck. He would want to take the stuff apart and then put it together. That may explain why he studied to become a mechanic (under the tutelage of Sumant Moolgaonkar at Telco). He even set up a workshop in his house to further this learning process.

Motherly advice We had picked up Mother Teresa in Jamshedpur. It was evening, the sun was setting and she was praying silently with these beads in her hand. Now, JRD was a man who could never stop speaking. He kept talking to her, but she remained silent. I kept shushing him, saying she was praying. Then he asked her what the Tatas should do about the poverty that slum children had to live with. She turned to him and said, "Mr Tata, you just do your job and get people employed. Leave the poverty to me." He shut up after that.

Aviation was, of course, JRD's greatest passion. He was also passionate about reading and writing, as well as children. He was interested in a wide variety of matters, and to each of them he strove to give time and energy in a way that was quite remarkable.

He was inquisitive about the people who worked for him; he wanted to know everything about them, particularly the manner in which they worked. I used to sit in a small room next to his office and quite often during the day I would find the interconnecting door open a little bit, with an eye looking in to see what I was doing. When I first came in, his peon told me never to cheat and hide papers that I had not worked on by putting them away in a drawer, because saab would come and open every drawer to see what work was pending.

During my time in Delhi I got to see the way JRD interacted with people. It was his genuine interest in people that gave him his charisma and, towards the end of his life, turned him into an iconic figure not only within the Tatas but across India.

He was very tolerant, always ready to accept a genuine mistake or a difficulty in understanding something he wanted you to do. What he would never accept was slackness of any kind. He was very quick to gauge whether you were working hard or not. JRD spent many hours in his office. The result was that his subordinate staff had to spend even longer hours there.

What JRD would have really liked to do was spend his life in aviation, but that was not to be. He was finishing his university education when his father suddenly died and he had to come back. Then came the chairmanship and that negated his passion for aviation. But Air India remained his first love; whatever extra time he had was devoted to the airline. Everybody in the Tatas used to complain about this, but there is nothing that they could do about it.

He had a tremendous knack with children, despite never having any to call his own. I remember the time I was in Delhi; whenever he came on his visits he would call my twin daughters over and spend hours with them. He would take them out, entertain them. The first time they went to a big hotel was with him. He would dilute their orange juice with a drop of gin and they would come back absolutely delighted. "Mama, we had gin today," they would proclaim.

He was marvellous with kids, those of colleagues, of friends and, at weekends in his home in Mumbai, those of the servants. Children were always around him. He never ceased to be amused by them, he never tired of them, and he was always patient with them.

JRD was quietly but intensely proud of India. What upset him most was the poverty, which he found almost degrading. He did what he could, of course, as chairman of the Tatas. All the street urchins near Bombay House and around his home at Cumballa Hill came to know him well — and he got to know each one of them. He sent many of them to school and he kept giving them clothes and toys.

The solution to the poverty problem, he believed, was education and, even more so, population control. He often quoted the Kerala example: reducing population growth through widespread education. His main thrust, his pet subject — outside the corporate world — was population control.

Every time he came to Delhi, whenever we called on a minister or the prime minister, he would before the end of the meeting invariably talk about the population issue. He would argue strongly that India wasn't doing enough on this count; he would plead with the people in power. He grew sad about this towards the end of his life, because he felt that very little was being done. But he remained proud of what had been accomplished in Jamshedpur, where in his lifetime the per capita population was brought below the all-India level.

JRD was an excellent time manger. He had his working life divided into almost ironclad compartments, and he would not deviate from these. If he had something to do every Monday morning at 10 am, he would do it Monday after Monday, no matter what came up. It was the same with his appointments. If he gave you an appointment, he would keep the time for you. He was also very strict about people trying to pass on work after a specified time. My orders as his executive assistant were never to accept anything at all, whoever it may have come from, after 5 pm.

JRD was always for progress. As he got older, he became increasingly conscious about choosing a successor. It took him a long time to appoint one, and he thought he had erred in delaying the decision. He felt that certain things had to remain constant: integrity, transparency, and the need for good governance. As for the rest, he was all for change, especially technological change. What annoyed JRD the most was lies. Untidiness or lack of cleanliness was another sore point, as was any form of unnecessary ostentatiousness. He lived austerely and he hated any form of extravagant expenditure.

JRD was an extraordinary man. He was extremely simple and very complex — at the same time. His great plus point was his simplicity of thought and action, reflected best in the way he lived. And, yet, he had an extremely sophisticated mind, and he enjoyed sophistication in all its forms. Anything crude and vulgar was abhorrent to him. This strange mixture attracted people to him. He was extremely polite. I remember flying with him on many occasions, me in the window seat and him near the aisle. People walking up and down would stop and talk to him, and he would respond as if he had known them all his life. And, inevitably, he would say: "Do come and see me when you are in Bombay." Needless to say, nine times out of ten the person would turn up. JRD would by then have forgotten all about the matter and it would be left to me to refresh his memory.

You always felt comfortable with him. He would go out of his way to put youngsters who came to see him at ease. When you came out of his room after, say, an interview, you felt like you had just met a friend or a family member. That was part of his greatness. It was instinctive.

S. A. Sabavala served in the British and Indian armies during the Second World War before starting his career as a journalist. He has been associated with the Tata Group since 1967 and is currently a director in Tata Steel