Indian industrialist Ratan Tata

Ratan Tata’s embarrassment on being driven to school in Rolls-Royce: Peter Casey

(Peter Casey is the author of ‘The Story of Tata: 1868 to 2021’. This excerpt was first published in NDTV on September 5, 2021)

  • Ratan received his earliest sustained experience of the world beyond the Tatas when his grandmother enrolled him at Campion School. Established in 1943 by a Jesuit priest, Father Joseph Savall, Campion was-and is-a day school located on Cooperage Road, across the street from Mumbai’s principal soccer stadium, Cooperage Ground. Despite its proximity to a sports stadium, Ratan recalls having little interest in sports in school. ‘I don’t remember too much about sports [in school],’ he says. ‘I remember that my grandmother used to have this huge antiquated Rolls-Royce and she used to send that car to pick my brother and me up from school. Both of us used to be so ashamed of that car that we used to walk back home. That is the sport that I remember.’ Indeed, after a time, he arranged for Lady Navajbai’s chauffeur to drop him off some distance from the school, lest his classmates think he was spoilt…

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