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Mia Farrow to help deprived Indian kids

Hollywood actress and former wife of director Woody Allen, Mia Farrow wants to come to India to care for deprived children.

''I would like to be a relief worker,'' says Farrow, who already has a family of 13 adopted children including a 10-year-old boy from Calcutta.

In an interview to The Sunday Times, London, the 53-year-old actress scoffed at suggestions that she might see herself as a latter-day Mother Teresa. ''Make no mistake, it is not charity. I am getting more out of it than I put in,'' she says.

In fact, she had planned out her life from the time when she was a nine-year-old suffering from a polio attack. The month she spent in a hospital at Beverly Hills surrounded by children fighting for survival completely changed the course of her life.

''It changed my view of life. I became aware that everybody did not live happily in Beverly Hills, that there was a precariousness to our existence.''

She has adopted 14 children - African-American, Korean and Vietnamese. Two are blind, one has cerebral palsy, another is a drug addict. One of her daughters, Soon-Yi married Woody Allen a few years ago.

Thaddeus, the Indian boy, was adopted when he was only five years old. A polio victim, he had been found at a railway station in Caclutta at the age of two and taken to an orphanage.

''I wish I could walk,'' Thaddeus said on his 10th birthday.

''Why was he not vaccinated? It should not happen when we have a cure,'' says Farrow in anguish.

She and her son have been recruited to lead a $500 million fund-raising programme on behalf of the UNICEF that aims to eradicate polio from the world by the year 2000.

UNI

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