Fund Raising for 9 different causes

 Hi folks, i am an admin with Mumbai Road Runners a running community in India. This year we are raising funds for 9 different NGOs in 9 different sectors coinciding with the Navratri Festival in India next month. As you are aware, the NGOs are all facing severe funds crunch during this covid pandemic with the result that many of their projects are starved for resources. This is an attempt by us to fill in that gap, to augment the resources of these NGOs so that their programs are carried on successfully, thereby benefiting the poor and marginal people to whom the NGOs serve. Therefore requesting one and all to contribute generously to one or more than one of these NGOs. The fund raising link for each NGOs is given below. You can click on any link, which will take you directly to the payment page. All these NGOs are on the United Way platform so they are vetted properly by the United Way team. All contributions to these NGOs are tax exempt under the Income Tax Act, 1961 and the tax receipts for your donations, will be furnished directly by the respective NGO.

https://www.unitedwaymumbai.org/tmm-fundraiser-15409

St. Jude India Childcare Centres. St Jude India ChildCare Centres provide free, safe, hygienic accommodation and holistic support to needy cancer affected children travelling with their parents from rural and semi-urban areas to big cities to seek the best cancer treatment. We bridge the gap between free medical treatment provided by the hospital, and physical and emotional support needed by families to complete cancer treatment.

https://www.unitedwaymumbai.org/tmm-fundraiser-15407

Animedh Charitable Trust – The objectives of ANIMEDH CHARITABLE TRUST (ACT) are to provide support and social services to needy women and children. ACT empowers women to transform their lives by providing vocational training and facilitating income generation opportunities. ACT also promotes basic and higher education for the children, especially the girl-child.

https://www.unitedwaymumbai.org/tmm-fundraiser-11843

MOHAN (Multi Organ Harvesting Aid Network) Foundation’s mission is to ensure that every Indian suffering from end stage organ failure be provided with the ‘gift of life’ through life-saving organ. Its main objectives include creating public awareness about organ donation, training healthcare professionals in transplant coordination, counselling bereaved families to donate their loved ones’ organs.

https://www.unitedwaymumbai.org/tmm-fundraiser-15411

Light of Life Trust – Light of Life Trust is an NGO registered under the Bombay Public Trusts Act, 1950, works towards realising untapped potential of India’s rural communities and empower them through its 2 verticals – Project Anando (Education) and Project Jagruti (Community Development).

https://www.unitedwaymumbai.org/tmm-fundraiser-15412

MENTAID a parents driven initiative, ensures early intervention, education, vocational training, respite care. It promotes Self Advocacy and Independence for children and young adults with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. Through intensive training it empowers their families, 50% of whom come from the economically disadvantaged section of society.

https://www.unitedwaymumbai.org/tmm-fundraiser-15413

Dignity Foundation’s mission is to create an enlightened society in which senior citizens feel secure, confident and valued, and can live with dignity. We help empower senior citizens with an enriching set of opportunities & programmes so as to lead a more dignified, secure, joyful and fulfilling life.

https://www.unitedwaymumbai.org/tmm-fundraiser-15414

Bhumi is one of India’s largest independent youth volunteer non-profit organisations. Bhumi as a platform will enable over 12,000 volunteers in more than 12 cities across India for causes like education, environment, animals and community welfare. Bhumi is the recipient of the ‘Leader in Volunteer Engagement Award’ conferred by iVolunteer.

https://www.unitedwaymumbai.org/tmm-fundraiser-15408

Population First is a communications and advocacy initiative for health and population issues from a gender and social development perspective. Our key objectives are to help reduce gender imbalances in the population and work towards gender sensitive and social development oriented health and population programs.

https://www.unitedwaymumbai.org/tmm-fundraiser-15410

Habitat India beneficiaries are economically poor, low income, marginalized groups considered non-bankable, disaster affected families that includes historically disadvantaged communities. Till date, we have served over 62,025 families comprising of 297,720 individuals through our interventions in Housing, Sanitation, Access to Water and Disaster Response. We are head quartered in Mumbai.

Rebecca

 

Brilliant psychological drama movie from Alfred Hitchcock "Rebecca" (1940) starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) accidentally meets the beautiful Joan Fontaine when he is rather contemplating jumping down a cliff in Monte Carlo. One thing leads to another and soon both are romantically involved. She then becomes his second wife after his first wife Rebecca accidently drowns herself off the sea coast. Rebecca is never shown in the movie, but her imprint is throughout the movie. Her faithful housekeeper Mrs. Denvers is rather too faithful to her memories and seems to be of the devilish and plotting kind. She was too close to Rebecca and adored her too much to bear her loss too badly. Hitchcock twists the plot towards the end to first implicate Maxim with her murder and then it goes around to another tale of her sickness, or probably that she was pregnant or maybe she committed suicide or murder, the plot keeps swinging about till the end. Joan Fontaine as the girl who does not have a name in the movie looked beautiful throughout the movie and acted brilliantly as well.  Laurence Olivier is passable, The film won a clutch of awards for Alfred Hitchcock. 

Pygmalion

 George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion being adapted into a film in 1938 directed by Anthony Asquith and starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller among others. The film stays true to the play, well almost. Professor Higgins (Leslie Howard) is a professor of phonetics & linguistics, and while wandering about in lowly Convent Garden, gets into a scrap with a flower girl Eliza Dolittle (Wendy Hiller). Just then Colonel Pickering comes by, he is an expert of linguistics and dialects himself and wants to meet Higgins, having returned from India. Pickering challenges Higgins to improve the flower girl in a few weeks. Eliza lands up on his doorstep the next morning to learn from him. Then follows the most exacting phase of her life while she tries to throw away her Welsh cockney accent and to adapt a proper British accent with pronunciation, grammar, manners, etiquette etc. Higgins accepts an invitation to an embassy reception with trepidation as to how Eliza would perform. It became his obsession and luckily Eliza goes through with flying colours. Higgins thinks he has won the battle but what has to become of Eliza, where will she go back now that she has become a proper lady, she won't be able to go back to selling flowers. Higgins is unfortunately not able to make that connection.  Higgins comes across as a self centred egomaniac and for him every girl is like a subject to him, like his triumph. Wendy Hiller got nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars. Superb acting by both Wendy Miller and Leslie Howard, both stayed true to script. 

Meshes of the Afternoon

 

Meshes of the Afternoon, (1943) a short film created by Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid. Its again a surrealist film just like Luis Bunuel's "Un Chien Andalou". A woman is seen as walking down a path, she goes to a door, finds it locked, finds the hidden key, the key falls down onto the stairs, then she goes inside the room, which is in disarray, the phone is off the hook, she finds a knife on a bread, a record player playing and then somebody is chasing her, she in turn is chasing a lady without a face but not able to catch her. The images and visuals keep repeating like in a dream. There is no meaning to the movie, its a dream sequence, and one can interpret it the way one wants. Later a man comes into the house, the same sequence keeps repeating, with the key and the knife and the lady. One can sum it as the character's thought patterns in a time of crisis. 

Strange Happenings at Landings Castle & Other Humorous Stories

 

A collection of uproariously humorous stories by Gopal Ramanan, third in his series of short stories books. Starts off with a brilliant spoof on Sherlock Holmes with some strange happenings going in Landings Castle with Lord Landings himself perplexed and requesting for Sholmes' help along with Dr. Dotson. Then there is a take on the venerable James Bond getting old, well, actually old instead of being perpetually young and handsome. Partha is then fretting with his unusually long name in the US and wonders whether he could change it to something short and sweet. Then there are a series of short essays on the author's crisp observations on life's inanities all laced with sweet humour. Written in a very simple style with narrative reminiscent of the great RK Narayan, this is a highly recommended book for light reading. Goodreads 5/5 

Ad Astra

Ad Astra, a 2019 science fiction drama movie directed by James Grey and starring Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Liv Tylor, Donald Sutherland among others. It is more of a psychological drama movie rather than pure technology although there is a lot of science frontiers being broken down as shown in the movie, for eg. colonies in moon, Mars and space travel to Saturn, Jupiter & Neptune. Brad Pitt (Roy McBride) is the son of Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones) who has gone away to space for 30 years in search of intelligent life on the universe, in the process he has travelled to Saturn, Jupiter and now stationed near Neptune. His space station has created some cosmic ray disturbances which has affected Earth also, so the son sets out to locate his dad in the vast universe, which takes 79 days from Mars itself. Lot of emotional tug of war between father and the son later, earth is safe from the cosmic disturbances and the power surges. The movie drags a bit in the middle especially when Brad is about to reach Neptune to find his dad after 3 decades. There is no emotional re-union sort of, the Dad has more or less lost his contact and interest in Earth. The movie was nominated to the Oscars in the sound mixing category. The special effects in the movie is quite extraordinary, it is in the human connect that the movie finds its weak spot. 
 

Open Water 2: Adrift

 

An open water adventure holiday gone horribly wrong. Open Water 2: Adrift is projected as based on true events, but with the kind of human stupidity depicted in the movie, i doubt if humans can be so stupid. Three pairs of couples go on a yatch holiday out in the open sea or ocean, far away from shore. One couple has an infant daughter also on board, which itself was a risky thing to take such a young one on a ship or a yatch cruise. Four of the members jump into the water to do a swim which i thought was another stupid thing to do, who swims in open ocean far away from land, maybe some do perhaps. Of the remaining, Amy (Susan May Pratt) has a phobia for water because of an incident in her childhood when her father drowned while swimming with her. The other guy Dan (Eric Dane) is ostensibly the owner of the yatch, but later reveals that he is a fraud and that the yatch is actually belonging to his boss. What kind of a boss allows his employee to take his yatch out to a cruise, beats me. Anyway, both of them also jump into the water, without realising that nobody has bothered to put the ladder down or keep the hatch down so that people can climb back. Dan is such an idiot that he does not realise the blunder he has committed endangering everybody's lives. All of them are stuck down in the water with nary any hold or groove to climb back. Soon one after another start drowning. The movie advertised shark attack, but there was nothing of that sort, even though blood oozed from a couple of the guys.