Age ain't nothing but a number: Tina

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In a nondescript shamble at Thakurdwar near Mumbai, amid a hundred or so senior citizens playing carrom, reading magazines or practising yoga, is where Tina Ambani, the wife of Anil Ambani, one of the richest men if not the most influential, seems to be at most ease. “Age ain’t nothing but a number,” she chortles to a 70-year-old man even as she strikes a cookie in.

“Our elders are not a liability; we can turn them into our strengths,” says the fabulous-at-50 lady, talking about the Harmony Silver Awards that take place on October 7, at Rabindra Natya Mandir.

The awards (Rs 51,000 and a citation for each), instituted by her five-year-old Harmony Silver Foundation, are in their second edition. The jury comprises MP Priya Dutt, actors Om Puri and Victor Banerjee, Justice Leila Seth and The Indian Express Group Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta, and awards are presented to “silvers” who’ve achieved something remarkable. Last year’s winners included Chelekkodan Ayesha, an 80-year-old woman who gave her Class X exams along with her great-granddaughter, and is now the face of education in her home state Kerala.

“The number of our seniors is boggling; from the current 80 million, we will have 137 million seniors by 2012,” says Ambani, “And I’m not scared of their growing numbers.”

The Harmony Interactive Centre, where we are at, is a three-storey community centre where her initiative functions as a flagship. There are other spaces in Mumbai, Delhi and soon Bangalore, where elders collect to make friends, train in computers and yoga, learn about investments and the like. “They don’t need care; they need interaction,” she adds.

Ambani says that even though her parents are no more, she came from a “very secure and loved childhood, the youngest of nine siblings”, who recently collected and toured the Ashtavinayak in Maharashtra.

Her mother-in-law, she says, is as close as one can get to being her mother. “I just love her; she’s the most caring and giving person ever.” It’s probably for the same reason that she has dedicated her opening-soon hospital to her: it will be called Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital and Medical Research Centre, and will house a geriatric centre too. “There are only a couple of hospitals in the country offering geriatric care,” reasons Ambani, who has also been elected to the board of trustees of the Peabody Essex Museum, US.