From Kokilaben to Nita Ambani: How Dhirubhai mentored the…
In an earlier interview with journalist Karan Thapar for his show ‘Face to Face’, Nita Ambani revealed how she was mentored by her late father-in-law Dhirubhai Ambani into the confident woman that she is today. In the interview, Nita shared how after her marriage to Mukesh, every evening her father-in-law would quiz her about what was happening in the world. This activity pushed her to prepare and extensively read up for her discussions with Dhirubhai Ambani. “Papa was quite a taskmaster, I must say. 7.30 PM was half an hour with him alone and he used to quiz me, Karan, on different questions– share market, Reliance, politics, world affairs, international affairs. And every time I was forced to read up and I would prepare myself for the next day,” Nita recalled.
To this, her husband Mukesh Ambani added, “I would get a phone call, ‘What is Papa going to ask me today?’ And I used to tell her maybe so and so… And at 8 o’clock in the evening we used to have fun after that.”
Nita chipped in and said, “But the next day the questions will be entirely different and I will be stumped. And I think those were my growing up years, really, with wonderful memories of Papa (Dhirubhai Ambani).”
When Karan Thapar asked Nita, “So a lot of Nita that is sitting in front of me is his creation,” Nita Ambani agreed to it.