Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

He had been born in Sanjan, Gujarat. This was where the first Parsis landed after Muslim persecution in various jihads from the eighth to the tenth centuries, which ultimately drove almost all of them from Persia. "Parsi" means Persian.

After Mr. Randeria worked for Swissair for a number of years, looking for places to outsource Swissair's revenue accounting—labor costs were much too high in Switzerland—in 1995 he founded a company that provided financial support services for airlines. Tata had a stake in this company, but then Tata has a stake or part ownership in many companies. The name Tata was stamped on the back of most Indian buses and trucks and cars. Tata owned Tetley Tea and many retail stores. Taj Hotels was owned by Tata, and its hotels included the Pierre in New York and what had been the Ritz-Carlton in Boston. Telecom, steel, software, utilities, Internet, and insurance companies were all Tata enterprises.

One of the curiosities of the company, founded by Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata (1839-1904), was that a sizable portion of the immense Tata profits went to charitable groups. This was the case from the beginning, the company endowing research institutes and hospitals. Ratan Tata, the current CEO of the whole business, is a single man in his mid-sixties about whom very little is known, other than the fact that he lives rather modestly. He continues to build up his company, buying steel mills and telecommunication giants and, recently, producing affordable family cars—and, as always, looking for constructive ways to give most of his money away. In 2006, the year I poked my nose into Tata Consultancy Services, sales in the conglomerate brought in $24 billion.

Walking through the marble halls of the huge building, I asked Mr. Randeria who his competitors were.

"Microsoft, Infosys, many others," he said. "But our motto is 'Top Ten by 2010.' We will get there by various ways. Growth both organic and inorganic. Code of conduct. Culture. Ethics. Expansion. Also acquisition—we recently acquired Pearl Insurance and the banking and financial giant Chile Comicron. We are very serious. We have an office in Budapest that caters to European languages."

"I passed through Budapest. I had the idea that a lot of Hungarians were looking for jobs."

"If they are willing to work and have skills, we will hire them."

"Funny to hear that from an Indian company," I said.

"But consider our advantages. English language, a legacy from British rule," Mr. Randeria said. "And education. We are on the whole a very well-educated country."

"So everything's rosy."

He knew I was baiting him, but he took it well. "No. I toe the line, but everyone knows there's corruption in India and that you can buy a degree. And there's our population. It's growing at a hectic pace."

It was six hundred million in 1973. It was now more than twice that. I said, "What can you do about it?"

"You can only bring it down by education," Mr. Randeria said. "Adult literacy. You see, if you have an education, you have many sources of pleasure and intellectual stimulation. Ways of using your time. Without education, it's only sex in the rural areas."

"Do you remember what Mumbai was like before this population explosion?"

"Oh, very well indeed." He smiled at the memory. "When I was a boy in Jogeshwar, streets used to be deserted by seven or eight in the evening. It was dark. My parents wanted me home. We saw foxes and hyenas, and so many snakes. Now it's a very crowded place."

Jogeshwar, once a remote area of Salsette and the site of a famous cave, was a large and congested population center about ten miles from central Mumbai. Mr. Randeria said that four hundred families a day—an average of four people per family—migrated to Mumbai.

Swiping his security card from door to door, leading me into the call center, he said, "We are the call center for"—he named an American retailer he made me swear I would not reveal—"at levels one to four. If you have a problem with your electric drill, we will sort it out."

He showed me the rooms where advanced classes in English language were taught (including American intonation), and the technical rooms where employees learned the inner workings of the products, so they could answer a flummoxed buyer's question or offer advice.

Please remove the chuck key from the pouch, insert it in the chuck of the drill, and turn clockwise to tighten the teeth against the bit...

That sort of sentence was practiced and rehearsed in the classrooms and then recited over the phone by Indian employees, who gave themselves American names ("Rick," "Andrea") and spoke in American accents.