Source: Francois Xavier Durandy
Recipient of the highest civilian awards of two countries – his birth place France and the adopted country of his forefathers India – JRD Tata died on November 29 in 1993 at the age of 89. A Padma Vibhushan and a Bharat Ratna awardee, JRD’s ancestors had fled Persia, the homeland of Parsis, after facing persecution.
To confine Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata in the identity of a Parsi would do immense injustice to the exemplary human being he was. In a certain sense, the history of modern India, stepping into the civilisation the way the West knows it, is lived through this man who was born on 29 July, 1904. An aviator, industrialist, and a man of high moral values, JRD’s contribution to the making of India is remarkable.
JRD, or ‘Jeh’ as Ratan Tata calls him fondly, was born to the fabulously wealthy Ratanji Tata and his French wife Suzanne Briere at 6, Rue Halevy, Pin Code 75009, indicating the ninth “arrondissement” of Paris. The photos here show the building where he was born, then and now.
It is said that JRD’s last words were in French spoken from his deathbed in a hospital in Geneva, Switzerland. The man who was awarded the Legion d’honneur, reportedly said “comme c’est doux de mourir” (How gentle it is to die!). JRD now sleeps for eternity alongside his parents in the world-famous necropolis – the110-acre Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris amid more than 5,000 trees and greats like Molière, Chopin, Balzac, Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde, Sarah Bernhardt, Isadora Duncan, Edith Piaf, and Jim Morrison buried in the vicinity.
The Parsis, fleeing from persecution in Persia, famously promised the King at Sanjan in South Gujarat, who accepted them as refugees, that they will gel with the majority local population like sugar melts in milk, sweetening the outcome. Parsis consider Gujarati as their mother tongue. The names of JRD Tata, his father and his mother along with the holy words of Zoroastrian religion Humat, Hukht and Huvarast (Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds) written in Gujarati embodies the essence of the centuries-old history of a few thousand people in a single man.
It would not be surprising that JRD and great French actor Jean Gabin knew each other even momentarily in their childhood. Jean Gabin, known for his powerful roles in French cinema starting from the black and white era, attended for a brief period the same school – Janson de Sailly. Gabin was only two months younger than JRD. At least one of the two must be in the photograph below.
Some of us old enough might relate to an English rendition of a French song – Je sais (I know) – in the distinct voice of Gabin. A verse, roughly translated, reads:
This is still what amazes me in life,
In the autumn when my age is ripe:
One often forgets many a dusk of sadness,
But a tender dawn lingers on always.
Words that JRD perhaps lived by, and personified for generations to com
A beautifully written article that brings back many fond memories to my mind.