At a board meeting on October 24, 2016, Tata Sons removed Cyrus Mistry as its chairman. His email to the board, written on October 25, reached the media the next day. In it he criticized decisions linked to Ratan Tata, including the Nano car, and said he was “shocked beyond words.”
Tata Sons replied on October 27. It called the email “unsubstantiated claims and malicious allegations” and objected that it had been released “in an unseemly and undignified manner.”
In December 2015 the police superintendent of Dhanbad, Rakesh Bansal, asked for a transfer. According to The Tribune, two days earlier he “was humiliated and scolded by the chief minister at Dhanbad airport.” The chief minister of Jharkhand was Raghubar Das. The officer was reported to be upset by the chief minister’s “public humiliation.”
Nagudhar poruttandru nattal migudhikkan merchendru iditthar poruttu. Friendship is not for laughing together. It is for stepping in to rebuke a friend who goes too far. This is couplet 784 of the Thirukkural, in its chapter on friendship.
In 1979 the first flight of India’s satellite launch vehicle, SLV-3, failed. Satish Dhawan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation, faced the press himself. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the project director, later recalled: “He took the whole blame on himself despite criticisms.” Dhawan told the press that “next year we would succeed because his team was a very good one.”
As a boy, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam had a teacher named Sivasubramania Iyer, an orthodox Brahmin. “One day, he invited me to his home for a meal,” Kalam wrote. Iyer served the Muslim boy himself. He told him: “Kalam, I want you to develop so that you are on par with the highly educated people of the big cities.”
He also told him: “Once you decide to change the system, such problems have to be confronted.”
In May 2006 the singer Girija Devi tied a sacred thread on the wrist of the singer Malini Awasthi at her home in Varanasi. The ceremony is the ganda bandhan. “Gandabandh is a traditional knot-tying ceremony, which cements the relationship between a guru and his shishya,” wrote The Tribune. “Usually performed on an auspicious day, it heralds the beginning of teaching.”
Pandit Jasraj, the newspaper reported, holds the other side of the bond. A guru cannot demand respect. He has to command it with his conduct.
In Taare Zameen Par (2007), Aamir Khan’s first film as director, a boy named Ishaan is sent to boarding school to be disciplined. A new art teacher, Ram Shankar Nikumbh, realizes that Ishaan is not happy at school “and sets out to discover why.” The cause he finds is dyslexia.
During the Rio Olympics in August 2016, the badminton coach Pullela Gopichand spoke about his player P.V. Sindhu: “Sindhu did not have her phone during the last three months. The first thing is I would return her phone.” He added: “I also stopped her from eating ice-cream. Now she can eat whatever she wants.”
In February 2020 Ratan Tata spoke about J.R.D. Tata, who led the Tata group before him. He called JRD his greatest mentor. “He was like a father and a brother to me,” he said.
Mai-baap: mother and father. The Rekhta dictionary gives its meanings: parents, master, lord, the one who brings someone up, ruler, guardian. The same word names the parent and the person in charge.