There are not many people who can claim to be a brand ambassador at 77. Ava Mukherjee is an exception. The Kolkata born, 77 year-old Mukherjee, who is known as the country's dadima, is the brand ambassador of Himalaya Herbal Healthcare products.

Mukherjee, looking gorgeous in a white saree, was in the city to launch Himalaya Drug Company's Chyavanaprasha. She says she was enjoying her new role as the brand ambassador of Himalaya. "As luck would have it, I have never played a young woman in any of my advertisements. I have always been the elderly lady giving the right advice for a better life. Then one day, I found that I had become everybody's Dadima! Now when I make my payments to the fruit vendor; he says, 'shukriya dadima'," Mukherjee laughs.

Mukherjee grew up in Ballygunge and studied in Kamal Girls High School. After marriage to film director and producer Goutam Mukherjee where she begun her career at Lever Brothers. "That was the mid 1950s and the company was planning to bring out the Dalda Cook Book. I was responsible for cooking all the recipes," she says.

While Mukherjee would prepare the food, a model was supposed to be filmed for the ads. The model was unable to whip up the batter for a cake though she had been coached. "The person who was filming the ad finally asked me to be the model. That was the accidental beginning of my modeling career". Mukherjee says. Later while working as a Bengali copywriter for ad agencies. Mukherjee modelled for products like Sunlight detergent bar and Mahaan Ghee. "Both were very popular. They were black and white ad films, very different from what you are used to now", she recalls.

Promise Toothpaste established Mukherjee as dadima for the first time where she was seen advising her grandson to use clove oil for toothache. "Since then there was no looking back. Complan and Birla White were my two other popular ads and then finally came Himalaya's Ayurvedic Concepts", says Mukherjee. She also starred in a Bollywood blockbuster when she played Shah Rukh Khan's grandmother in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Devdas.

One of the lesser known facts about Mukherjee is that she is the sister-in-law of poet Subhash Mukhopadhyay. "I will spend the whole day at didi-jamaibabu's house. It is not very often that I come to Kolkata. My heart belongs here," she says.

Now Mukherjee has to live with the dadima image even in real life. When she goes shopping, young girls crowd around her and ask, "Dadima I have pimples, please suggest a cure." Even the local fruit seller asked her the other day, "Dadima, can you suggest a remedy for hair loss?"