New Delhi: Dubbing late Ratan Tata—the former chairman of Tata Sons—as the ‘man with opposite polarities of character’, the author of the business tycoon’s authorised biography and former IAS officer Thomas Mathew revealed that the former fell deeply in love with Carolyne Jones in 1960s in California.
Thomas made the revelations, while referring to the accounts in his book ‘Ratan Tata: A Life’, during an interview with veteran journalist Barkha Dutt on Mojo.
Ratan met the woman, who had her maiden name as Carolyne Emmons, through an architect’s firm that her father ran.
“In 1962, Ratan passed out of Cornell University (in architecture) with flying colours…There was this gentleman called Archibald Quincy Jones. He was one of this external invigilators of Ratan. So, before Ratan left or at least planned to leave the US after graduation in 1962—you know, the polite man that he is—he picked up the phone to thank Archibald Jones. He (Jones) told him (Ratan) that in case he was coming to Los Angeles to see him (Jones),” recalled Thomas.
Following the conversation between Ratan and Jones, the former went to meet him with his thesis and Jones was impressed with it. Jones at that point offered Ratan a job. According to Thomas, Ratan was elated to have received an offer from the man who was building homes for celebrities, and he flew back to his institute and stopped the shipping of his belongings to India.
‘Carolyne was speechless as she looked at Ratan…’
Ratan met Carolyne, who used to visit him even after their separation, at this firm where her father Emmons was one of the founding partners with Archibald Jones. “When her father introduced her to Ratan, she said she couldn’t utter a word as she looked at Ratan. She was completely speechless and then started an amazing love story,” Thomas said.
‘Ratan’s grandmother never asked him to return to India…’
Towards the end of 1962, his grandmother Lady Navajbai Tata—the widow of Sir Ratan Tata, the second son of Sir Jamsedji Tata—fell ill. But, contrary to reports that Navajbai Tata called back Ratan to India leading to his separation with Carolyne are wrong. “Ratan called Navajbai Tata as My G. He was very possessive about her and said she was all his. That’s why he called her ‘My G.’ She didn’t call ask Ratan to come back to India. She was so caring and was aware for Ratan’s love for US that he called his second home. But she said she wasn’t keeping well. For Ratan, it was important that he would be with his grandmother,” the biographer claimed in the interview.
Carolyne was supposed to follow Ratan to India but then broke the 1962 Indo-China war. “For Americans those days, the subcontinent was fraught with dangers…it was something they couldn’t wrap their head around. She didn’t have the courage to come to India, though she told me that she regretted for not having come to India later,” he added further.
Carolyne got married, but was it a rebound?
Later, she—who was only 19-year-old that time—fell in love with another man named Jones, ‘who according to her was exactly like Ratan, was an architect and a flyer.’ “Her father actually told her (Carolyne) that she was on a rebound.” After some years, Ratan went to the US to meet her again when she was already married. At that time, she was carrying her second child.
‘You are having a happy life, won’t call you again…’
Ratan took Carolyne and her husband out on dinner. According to Thomas, Ratan told her that she was having a happy life and he won’t call her again. And he didn’t call her again till her husband was alive.
‘Their love never died…’
When her husband passed away, Carolyne called Ratan and they started talking again. According to Thomas, Carolyne then kept coming to India every year and stayed at Ratan’s home. “The emboss of love that she had for Ratan never died,” he said. Carolyne once told Thomas how she preserved the torn page of a book that had Ratan’s picture for years. And that’s the love story!
