Finally done with 'Beyond the Last Blue Mountain', a biography of J.R.D. Tata by R.M. Lala. It was every bit as wonderful as I expected it to be! For a long time in life, I had no role models and felt quite some pressure when we were asked to write essays about our role model and all :D I couldn't understand that concept of keeping someone as a benchmark for how you want to live your life (I was all about individuality you see). But JRD changed all that! He is one person whose life I would happily hold as a benchmark for my own because it was just so damn fantastic! Every time I read the book, I was almost overwhelmed by how there could be so much good in one person: in terms of capability, wisdom, attitude, everything!
They don't make leaders like him anymore: people who can balance excellence with humility and humanity. India owes him so many of her finest institutions like TIFR, BARC (which benefited from TIFR talent), TISS, Tata Memorial Hospital, NCPA etc. We also owe him our foray into civil aviation and atomic energy and truckloads of self-belief in ourself as a country :) Here is a great example of how humble a person he was, related by his driver:
If he was having lunch at Air India, he would inform me or say, "If I don't come by 1.15 you can go for lunch". If he unexpectedly made a lunch date, he would come down himself, 22 floors in the lift, tell me not to wait, and go to lunch. Sometimes I went to lunch and if he came down after that, he would take another car and come to Bombay House. Never once did he take it up with me.
I think the Air India connection is another reason why I like JRD so much. My daddy had his entire career at Air India (so different in its good days) and my childhood at Air India colony and school was a special time (for some reason, most of the people from Air India colony are super-attached to it even now...there was something special about that place). I also strongly identify with JRD's love for Mumbai: it is something like Scarlett O'Hara with Tara :D Even now, while I miss my home, I also miss Mumbai as a city very much. And the cherry on the cake was when I found out that JRD was also a fan of Disneyland and one of the last plans of his life was a trip there :)
While JRD's life is too awesome to make a boring book, due credit must also be given to R.M. Lala for researching and writing it really well. His language is very good too, as was that of many Indians when those stiff-upper-lip Brits were around :D I will finish this write-up with the last lines of the book, so beautifully written by the author:
And as the evening mellows and the shadows lengthen, somewhere above in the sky, in an invisible Puss Moth, is a voyager still pressing ahead to cross beyond the last blue mountain where a glorious sunset awaits him.
