Tina Ambani reminds us that ‘age ain’t nothing but a number’, shares her passion to help elders live productive lives

It’s a nondescript shamble at Thakurdwar, where a hundred odd citizens are playing carrom, reading magazines or practicing yoga. But Tina Ambani, wife of India’s richest man Anil Ambani, seems to be absolutely at ease. “Age ain’t nothing but a number,” she chortles to a 70-year-old gent 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, speaking about the Harmony Silver Awards scheduled for October 7 at Rabindra Natya Mandir. The awards — which carry Rs 51,000 in cash and a citation for each awardee — 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 is presented to “silvers” who’ve achieved something remarkable considering their age. Last year’s winners include Chelekkodan Ayesha, an 80-year-old woman who sat for her 10th standard exams along with her great-granddaughter and is now the face of education in her home state Kerala.

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

The Harmony Interactive Centre, which we visited today, is a three-storey community centre where Ambani’s 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.

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