When he climbed aboard a single-engine Puss Moth and flew solo from Karachi's Drigh Road Airfield to Mumbaivia Ahmedabad, he launched India into the global skies. That was 1932 and India's first scheduled air service. Years later, he inspired heroes as diverse as Kalpana Chawla and Narayana Murthy. And today, Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata would have turned a jolly 100 years old, presumably still insisting that people decades his junior call him just Jeh, short for Jehangir.

"Imagine me calling him Jeh," laughs author-journalist M V Kamath, whose .brush with the legend began when JRD was scouting for the right editor to compile his work. Years later, JRD would regale Kamath with tales about his French father-in-law and insist after each interview in a series for All India Radio that Kamath-the interviewer- ride home in JRD's car. "The first day I had to stop for a bag of potatoes and couldn't possibly arrive at the sabzi market in a Rolls Royce," Kamath recollects. But JRD never stopped offering him that lift.

Those who knew him agree that's the way he was-clear of vision, quick of wit and large of heart. T R Doongarji, a veteran Tata employee in his 38th year of service and now managing director of Tata Services, recounts an incident he thought would get him fired from the company immediately. A cricketer himself, Doongarji was following the radio commentary of a one-day game in a friend's office in another building.

The phone rang. "The first two times, I just picked up and hung up, rushing back to the commentary," says Doongarji. The third time, irate at being dragged away from the game, he hollered, "Who the hell is this?" into the phone. "This hell is JRD Tata. T-A-T-A, Tata," came the response. Doongarji inched into JRD's office nervously. His chairman was famously fit, enjoyed skiing, lifted weight; and followed sports keenly. "But I was sure it was my last day with the company," Doongarji says. 

The boss stared him down for a few seconds, "making me feel even worse". Then the mask crumbled. "Doongarji, who's batting and what's the score?" he asked when his laughter subsided. In Lasting Legacies, a special commemorative issue of an internal Tata review, a profile mentions an incident when a friend began a letter with the 'Dear Jay' salutation. In his reply, JRD said, "I have looked up the dictionary and find that a Jay is a 'noisy, chattering Europe an bird of brilliant plumage' and, figuratively, 'an impertinent chatterer or simpleton'. 

For future reference, please note that my name is spelt Jeh, in abbreviation of Jehangir'. Any resemblance between me and the bird is purely coincidental." On October 15,1982, at the age of 78, JRD undertook a commemorative flight 50 years after Air India was born, in an aircraft almost identical to the one he flew in 1932. "The only difference he found was the crackling radio," says Russi M Lala, a Tata family chronicler for decades and author of two books on JRD.

The original flight had space for just one person, four mailbags, an altometer and a speedometer. The map had to be held by him-opened, read, rolled once gain and returned to its potion between his knees. The affair with aircraft nd flying lasted years after hwith Air India. Adi Godrej, chairman of the Godrej group, remembers an incident from "many many years ago" when JRD was a guest at a dinner in the Godrej family home. "I was unmarried then and my fiancee was present too," he says.

As soon as JRD learnt that Godrej's fiancee was an air hostess, he was curious to know what air hostesses and other airline employees thought of the national carrier. "He spent the rest of the evening with my fiancee," laughs Godrej. JRD came to visit Lala when he was recouping at Mumbai's Tata Memorial Hospital in 1991 after a round of chemotherapy, covered by four blankets and with one hand tied to an intravenous drip. "It was 8 pm. And the 86-year-old man had come-cursing the traffic I later found out-from his office in Fort to the Parel hospital," Lala says.

When his biographer extended a hand and said the visit made all the difference, JRD simply said: "I've come to visit an old friend." The kindness and affection he showed-"with silken bonds of affection he held us and the Tata companies together," says Lala-is a lesson in management "from the heart". Kamath agrees wholeheartedly. After he had finished compiling and editing a series of his writings and speeches, a pleased JRD sent for his editor to discuss a suitable compensation.

"I told him it was an honour to be his editor," but he'd have none of it. "I didn't know what to do," says Kamath. Quoting too small a sum would risk the appearance of poor self worth. Too large a demand would be unseemly too. Finally, Kamath requested a two-day holiday at the plush Fort Aguada resort in Goa. "Two days?' JRD exclaimed. "I was horrified, had I overpriced myself?" Kamath remembers. "Not two days, spend a week there. And take a friend along too," JRD said.