Ace comedians to get together for charity

Titled Chennai Laughs, the evening will be witness to the laugh riot put together by A Night At The Comedy Club fame Anuvab Pal, Aditi Mittal — one of the first women standup comedians, self-mocking engineer turned writer Azeem Banatwalla, Sundeep Rao, who has partial sight, Ajit Saldanha of Punchline fame and Anu Menon, better known as her alter-ego, the bespectacled loquacious and heavily-accented Malayali Lola Kutty. 

“When we approached them, they were more than willing to participate in the event because it was for a cause,” says Ashvin Agarwal of Madras Round Table 1, which is organising Chennai Laughs to raise funds for Mahesh Memorial Paediatric Oncology Centre (MMPCW). “The funds raised will be used for the expansion plans of MMPCW, which works towards creating public awareness about cancer, providing financial aid to economically challenged patients, organising counselling and support for cancer patients and their families,” adds Ashvin. Over the last few years the number of patients being treated at the MMPCW has doubled from 150 to 300. 

In fact, late music director Mahesh Mahadevan, in whose memory the Mahesh Memorial Trust has been created, himself was a member of MRT1 before he succumbed to cancer. “We have raised funds for MMT on earlier occasions, but when we reviewed which organisation needs support this year, MMPCW was an unanimous choice by the 20 plus members of MRT1,” says Rahul Ramachandran, chairman of MRT1. Though MRT1 is involved in a variety of social welfare activities, Rahul says they can be broadly divided into two categories — education and healthcare. “We don’t have a set criteria to select an organisation to aid, but we look at things such as the administration, number of people who would be benefitted, social impact of the project among other things. Our focus has predominantly been on children in need of help,” says Rahul. MRT1 has also constructed classrooms to schools, which were affected in natural calamities in the past. 

Rahul says MRT1 is happy that they have created brands of sorts with their programmes such as Chennai Gives and Chennai Laughs. But motivates MRT1 to continue with their social welfare activities? “First off, we are privileged to be part of MRT1 which has a track record of doing community service for decades. And when others say that their life changed because of MRT1, and it has happened on many occasions, it is difficult to express the satisfaction we derive from those words,” concludes Rahul.