I Want To Represent The Youth Of Our Country

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW Nita Ambani founder and chairperson, Reliance Foundation | As founder of the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre, she wants to make art accessible to all Indians; as an IOC member, she wants to bring the Olympics to India; and as a mother and grandmother, she wants to pass on humility and traditional values to her children

- RIYAD MATHEW, POOJA BIRAIA JAISWAL AND DNYANESH JATHAR

We are at Mumbai’s newest landmark, the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre, on a Monday evening. Preparations are in full swing for the award-winning Broadway musical—Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music— which will begin playing early May. Ambani says this will be the first time an international Broadway production will be staged in India, and the entire team has flown down from the US and will stay for almost a month. Nita Ambani, who is personally involved with everything at the NMACC, has just held a mahurat puja ahead of the show, after which she meets us. It is 8pm on International Workers’ Day, and Ambani looks radiant in a pink sari, as if her day has just begun. She is self-effacing and gregarious as she warms up for a candid conversation with THE WEEK, along with a mug of coffee.

“I don’t even have any concept of what I do at this moment... between Mumbai Indians (her IPL team) and the stage puja for The Sound of Music. They (performers) were so taken in with the whole experience. They said it is better than any theatre they have performed in.... We should do anything that brings Indian art and culture into the spotlight. I talk as a mother and a grandmother. We don’t want to lose all this,” she says, her eyes sparkling with excitement.

The NMACC, which is a part of the larger Jio World Centre in Mumbai’s plush business district of Bandra Kurla Complex, consists of the 2,000-seater Grand Theatre, the 250-seater The Studio Theatre and the 125-seater The Cube. The aim, says Ambani, is to provide an accessible space for the exhibition of Indian and international art and culture.