A red, silk kimono, she sits curled up in the brocade-upholstered chair for all the world like a Hollywood star. The image is made more forceful by the backdrop of an enormous dressing-room mirror surrounded by bulbs lit in a row. Chintz curtains softly drape the large windows. This is her own personal changing room and at this moment, she is surrounded, star-like, by a troupe of attendants, flying around to her every beck and call. Some of her staff have been with her for several years and address her as Didi. Her hands are delicate, her nails flash red, on her toes as well, curlers in her hair seem to add to her majesty. And yet, she looks suddenly small and fragile in a chair that has physically grown too large for her. I am blown away by her svelte new silhouette, yes she is verging onto the fashionable size zero and she carries it to maximum effect. Nita Ambani has shed a good 25 kgs over the last couple of years and it shows! She sees me enter and is all attention since she has something on her mind, “Shirin, we have to finish the interview early. Mukesh is taking me out to dinner at eight!”

Later, she is the centre of attention around the large leather chair that is in fact “Papa’s chair”. It has been decided that this historic armchair, a favourite of Dhirubhai Ambani, father, father-in-law, mentor, visionary, be focal to our cover image. The coffee table books neatly arranged around this, a sitting room alcove, range from Dhirubhai Ambani, The Man I knew by Kokilaben D Ambani to The Nature of Biodiversity in India and Rajasthan, The Living Traditions. She is a team player and will squat on the floor if required, deep in suggestions and choices. And we the team of the moment, are all vying for her attention. Nita this…Nita that, we all want to be heard. And then there is silence. There is another palpable presence that cannot be denied. “Chalo let’s do it. Let’s go for it guys!” Mukesh Ambani declares, entering energetically. And suddenly the equation changes and it is Mr Ambani this and Mrs Ambani that. His physical presence is an awesome thing – electrifying almost. Because he is an Ambani. Because he heads a corporation to reckon with. Because he is the man who has created so much wealth for ordinary shareholders.

She understands. This is as it should be! She projects an aura of power but not of invincibility. He seems invincible. She has never looked better. He is formal and straight-backed in his custom-made suit and the only watch that he ever wears, which belonged to his father. She grew up in a large rambling house surrounded by family, animals and dance, which she practices to this day. She was the chosen one but maintained her identity, taking up a job as a teacher in a school, as a young bride. He encouraged her. As he has done through the years while she created her own goals and achievements. Today, an educator to respect, the coveted Dhirubhai Ambani International School is her baby; a creator of townships, as in Jamnagar and a Bharatnatyam dancer of skill. Most recently, she has become the image of cricket, owner of the IPL team, Mumbai Indians, that ran through its wonderful luck this season, towards a disappointing end. She has become cricket crazy but he has always loved the game. She is her own person but the cues continue to come from him – dropped seemingly like rose petals to the breeze.

“Is there a TV around?” he asks. “Today, they may be selecting players for the Indian team!”

“Good for them,” she says, of her own young team members. “How womderful if a 19-year-old is picked for Team India!”

Dare I say it? They have a chemistry that works. A comfort level that is apparent and rare. They give each other space and revel in that giving. She has convinced him to traipse up the white metal rungs to the very top of their Cuffe Parade home, to the helipad, for our next shot. Mumbai is breathtaking, laid out underfoot. For them, probably a daily view, scrolling past their helicopter window or plane. And yet they are glancing down at it all – the homes, the shanties, the sea – acceding to its beauty. She, poised in her Jimmy Choo stilettos, favourites of the moment and evening dress, feeling out of place here on her own rooftop! He, at home as he obviously is.

As he disappears to continue with his Sunday in track pants, T-shirt and white sneakers, she looks fabulous in Anamika Khanna tunic in black and gold at the swimming pool area with its lawn and lit pagoda. If this is privilege, she wears it lightly – taking it for granted, hardly noticing like she probably does not really notice the planes, helicopter fleet, rows of high-powered cars. And oh yes, the dogs – at least 25 of them. Some of them are now posing unselfconsciously for our photographer, under the eyes of their minders and Anant, the Ambanis’ youngest, who is by all accounts an encyclopaedia on animals and wildlife. He says that he spends at least three hours daily with his canine troupe. His mother’s two favourites run cockily into the fray, the only two allowed in the living area. Shadow, Lucky, Sweetie, Chingari watch Magic and Sparkle, yap around her designer shoes, waiting to be coddled. They too are vying for her attention.

It is now 7.45 p.m. and time for Cinderella to run to her dinner date. She looks young and happy, like a fresher off to the corner café with her beau of the moment. She takes time off to say her goodbyes, shaking hands charmingly all around. And then she is gone....

THE INTERVIEW – snippets that dovetail into the shooting schedule....

“So here I am drawn to the world of cricket and enjoying it....”
We were at the Jamnagar YPO Retreat when I got the news that we bid for this IPL team. I was really very upset. I went and told Mukesh, why are we getting into cricket, we have enough on our hands. And he said don’t worry about it, we are going to have it professionally looked after. All that I remember of cricket was that when I was a young girl, my mother used to take us for all these test matches to see Pataudi batting…Bedi bowling…Farokh Engineer...and Durani. My mother liked watching cricket. I had no interest in it; I never watched cricket after I got married though Mukesh would watch matches and discuss them with his friends. But we’ve never been a cricket obsessed family like we are today.

The first IPL season I went as a viewer and an owner’s wife. I felt I had to go since we were losing badly and Sachin was injured and Mukesh was in New York at that time. Season two, I started taking interest and when we were losing very badly I went to South Africa to be with my team and there I realised that if I want to manage this team, I have to know cricket well. So I started watching all these cricket channels and started travelling for cricket. I went to Baroda, to Chandigarh, to all the little-little matches. To scout for youngsters since I felt it was very important to discover new talent. I watched county cricket on TV, I watched every match possible, getting to know strengths and weaknesses of players. That’s when I started getting obsessed. Once, when my son Akash had come down from Brown, he got so upset because I was watching cricket all the time. He said, ‘Stop this Neo cricket channel in the house!’

“I am told that people associate cricket now with Nita Ambani....”
Strange because at one time I was associated with school and education and now everyone thinks of me as sports. Unfortunately for me, I have realised that unless I go into details of everything I have never succeeded. People might think that I have got things easy but you know the way I have worked for the school or I have worked for Jamnagar. The same way, these last 10 months, I have just worked with my team and worked hard and built them up as a unit.

Cricketer Jonty Rhodes once said a nice thing, that a happy family is a winning family and I think that is so true. Unless all the members feel at ease, you don’t achieve much as a unit. So we call it the Mumbai Indians family. Every player’s contribution is important to us. What is nice is that I have the iconic figures in the team and I have the youngsters. I don’t think there is any team that has this. We have a Sachin Tendulkar and then we have a Saurabh Tiwary who said such an interesting thing for Sachin’s birthday: “Paji aapne jitne saal cricket ko diye hai, I am not even that many years old.” There is Pawan Suyal, who did not play but he is a young boy of 20, a fast bowler who clocked 140 kms. Imagine him having a Zaheer Khan to mentor him. Aditya Tare is a fisherman’s son who used to live in Palghar and his father used to ferry him here to play.

“Bhajji is Bhajji!”
It was so funny. We had reached the semi finals and it was a great achievement; we had been in the top of the league throughout. I was usually with the team, sitting around with them and Bhajji (Harbhajan Singh) saw me coming on the field and just lifted me up. Everyone was in a state of shock. And then he said to me in the dressing room that when we win the finals I am going to carry you and ‘Saab’ and run around the stadium with you both. That is him typically but it also shows the closeness that we all shared. They call me Bhabhi. Now they treat me like one of their own. It is a nice feeling.

I must tell you also about (Dwayne) Bravo. When we entered the semi finals we had a small dinner which Mukesh also attended and a few of my close friends. Bravo announced, I must thank ‘Master’, Master is Sachin, and I must thank ‘Mrs Boss’ for having the trust in us and I must thank ‘Mrs Boss’ husband’! I don’t think Mukesh has ever been called Mrs Boss’ husband, ever! He loved it.

“I will not hide the fact that I was very disappointed when we did not win the trophy....”
I had a lovely message from Anand Mahindra, saying, it is not about the title that you get but it is about the journey you have undertaken and enjoyed. And that is so true. It is the journey that no one can take from the Mumbai Indians. I was with the players in the dressing room and I said that we should congratulate ourselves because it was just one bad day and it happened to be the finals.

“Nobody can take away the fact that Lalit Modi created this.”
It was his vision. IPL has become the most watched league in the world. IPL is such a great property, it has to go on. Time will tell but I feel it will live beyond, it will get bigger, it will get better. But, for anything to last there is always a need for systems and processes. Look at the fan following that IPL has but to sustain the goodness of it, we must have systems and processes.

“I used to be a thin 47 kg before I had my kids....”
And then I turned into 90 kg. It didn’t matter too much because I was raising twins and one more child and then there was Jamnagar, INFOCOM and the school...it has been like running on a treadmill all the time. Anant, my little one, is fighting obesity and so two-and-a-half years ago, we went on a diet and an exercise regime together. We had a trainer down from Los Angeles, Andre, who specialises in children’s obesity, so that’s how I got into this. As in everything, it is important to have the discipline to sustain it every day. Come what may, I exercise daily, I try not to eat carbs and now it has become a way of life. I don’t touch bread, rice, pasta, wherever I go. Now I am sustaining it but then I would swim, dance, do stretches and light weights – in two sessions. One hour in the morning and after work for half an hour or 40 minutes. My son has been my only motivation. I used to swim inter-school, inter-college, I used to play sports, dance a lot. It feels great that I can do all this again. Today, I can swim 10 Olympic lengths.

“My diet plan is simple....”
I start my day with almonds and walnuts. Then an egg white omelet before I go to work. For lunch I have any vegetables and a lot of soup. By 4.30-5 p.m. at school or at work, I have paneer or anything that is filling but no carbs, like a moong dal pudla. I don’t starve. I eat before I get hungry so I don’t eat too much. I have a lot of unbuttered popcorn in between. My meal at night is again a lot of vegetables, sometimes moong ni dal but again no rice or wheat. If I am still hungry before bed, again some paneer or almonds. There is no special food made for me. I have just taken away the rice, rotis, farsan and desserts for the last two-and-a-half years. People have actually seen me shrinking.

“I am a certified scuba diver, from Hayman Islands, Australia....”
We go to the Maldives and do a lot of fun-in-the-water things. We are all very fond of the wild so sometimes we take three days off and go to South Africa, Botswana, Kenya, Ranthambore, Ghana…. Mukesh is not too fond of city holidays so I often tease him that I have not seen the rest of the world because we end up going either skiing or (I am still learning to ski, my children ski very well), or going to the wild…. Those are the fun holidays that we have had and created memories for us and our children. Sitting in the snow with the sun beating down, having meals from boxes, or making little snowmen for the kids when they were very small.

I don’t have dinner without Mukesh, ever. I wait up for him and the kids generally start trouping in to say their goodnights and then sit around and talk to him however late it is. He wants them around when he comes home. And of course, when the kids were little, he used to insist on doing math, chemistry, physics with them. Every Sunday was a studying day. He would be like a tuition teacher. It is only now that Isha is at Yale and Akash at Brown, that the house seems a little empty.

“Children imbibe what they see....”
I had my wisdom tooth extracted some days ago and yesterday the doctor came to see me. I had sent her a thank you note for doing this painlessly. She brought along something to show me. Four years ago, Isha had written an identical note to her saying ‘thank you’. Neither of us had spoken about it to the other. I was so touched that my daughter would do this probably having watched me. I have surrounded the children with love and warmth and I have also been very non conditional – both of us, Mukesh and I. We insist on simple things to keep them grounded like we never send the planes to fetch them, they have to travel Air India and they love it. Isha is staying in a dorm, sleeping on the top bunk; she shares the bathrooms with 18-20 other girls. Akash also stays in the dorm and I think that these are important things that all children have to go through. They want to do it.
In fact, they tell me now that I should travel by Air India too!

“Power is a way to empower people....”
Power to me is a responsibility – a means of creating new value and building institutions that serve a larger purpose for society. It is also about empowering people through education, sports, healthcare and other meaningful initiatives.

“I am not constrained by being Mrs Nita Ambani....”
I strongly believe in my own rights and wrongs and impose them on myself and my family. I am still very down to earth and ‘middle class’ in my thinking and values. For me and Mukesh it is very important to be normal. That is the reason we love being in the jungles in South Africa, in small towns of Europe, in some US cities where we can have a near normal existence. Till today, in Mumbai, I walk to my parents’ house, opposite our house, and in the evenings go for walks with my dogs.

“Mukesh does not believe at all in labels and lists. He is consistently trying to get out of the rich and powerful lists....”
What I admire about him is his passion to build from scratch timeless institutions that last beyond him. He has an extraordinary level of passion and purpose in everything he does. Once he has set an objective he is obsessed and paranoid about the same, giving virtually 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. Of course, living with him now for 25 years, I have inherited some of this. Mukesh’s ability to win the hearts and minds of his team members and align that with his passion and purpose is what creates the magic. For us, the common thread is -- put in your best, enjoy your work, be thoughtful in your actions, share your knowledge, translate your wealth to transform the world, and be humble in your achievements. And leave the rest to the Almighty.

“There are always higher places to climb.”
In the city of Mumbai, I am now building a new vision of healthcare delivery in H N Hospital. The target timeline of its opening is December 2011. I also aim to build a world-class university that will put India on the global map in education.

“Can you get me off these lists!”

Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries (RIL) has been a star performer in 2009-10 with a turnover of Rs 2.06 lakh crore, deftly beating the inflation and economic downturn. The man who hates lists and wants to be off them was however recently ranked the world’s fifth-best CEO in a Harvard Business Review survey. In a revealing interview, he speaks to SHIRIN MEHTA about family and trust. And the small things in life that count...

Do you insist on excellence from your children?
Yes, I believe that children have to grow up as all-round personalities but it cannot be at the cost of academics. Fortunately, all our three understand that there is a certain rigour that is required. They need not be in the top one percentile but the fundamentals have to be strong. Akash, my eldest, said ‘Dad, there is a calculator, why should I know my tables?’ I explained that you must be able to do everything in your head. So, before going to sleep, he would say all his tables by heart – addition tables, multiplication tables, and all of that. I study with my children. I learn a lot from them. Since Akash and Isha challenge me with calculus and other subjects, I have to read up half an hour every day to keep up with them! It’s fun and gives us a basis to bond.

You have high expectations of them?
Not really, I think it’s our job as parents to the best of our ability to give them the right values and principles. As they become adults, we cannot impose things on them. They have to make their choices but it’s our job to bring them to their full potential. That’s really what Nita and I both believe.

You have been a hands-on father...
Yes, I learnt from my father that when he was busiest, he had all the time for all four of us. I think that you have to get your priorities in life right.

Do you think it is more difficult to be an entrepreneur or to maintain a legacy?
What I have learnt is that it is important to pursue your passion and more than legacy, if you have a passion with a purpose, then everything else fits in. My father’s own view was more than entrepreneurship, it was really a passion to build an institution in India. Everyone talks about the American dream. I started off very young. Reliance was founded with Rs 10-15,000 and by the time I joined, this had become 50 or 60 or 70 crore, so that still is the largest jump. My father had a very firm belief in the country’s youth and in investing in talent. That’s the story of Reliance and for our children also it is exactly the same. The aspiration that they should have is really not to be the best in the community or best in the country but to be the best in the world!

What does power mean to you?
I have never really thought of power in the general sense. What you have is an opportunity and when you have opportunity where you have resources at your disposal, it becomes more of a responsibility. So in that sense, it’s not power, it is responsibility to do what is right. And it must extend beyond the self, it must create more value all around and generally I am, with due respect, not a big believer in labels and lists, so I try my best to get out of it.

Can you describe your day? How many hours a day do you work?
It’s funny but from a young age I always worked during the night. So I start late. In the morning, I exercise for over an hour. I get to the office only at about 11 or 11.30 a.m. I get home around 10 or 11 p.m., sometimes a little later. And then I have those two hours with Nita and the kids. We have developed a unique system of communication set up by Akash who is my tech guy in the family. So even though he studies at Brown, he can get himself, his sister Isha who is at Yale and me together on Skype. So, they show up virtually in our house at least five days a week. Both Nita and I have to report, in a sense, about all that happened to us during the day, while we have dinner. After that Nita and I have a quiet chat. Now, I am a late guy, so I work till 2 or 2.30 a.m., so that’s my own time.

What has life taught you?
That it is important to understand that when you are fortunate enough to create all kinds of resources, whether financial, intellectual, managerial, you are really a trustee for the next generation. That trusteeship to me is more important than power and that is why I say it is more a responsibility.

What is the most powerful tool you use in your life?
The most powerful tool that I use is trust. My philosophy is that when you give trust, you get 10 times trust back and that then builds relationships and at the end of the day life is all about relationships and trust.

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