Venturing just 90 kilometres southwards from Goa's sun, sand and frolic, one reaches Karwar, which nestles where the richly biodiverse and thickly forested Western Ghats kiss the serene, sparsely crowded, amphitheatrically-shaped beaches of Arabian Sea.
For the last three decades Karwar has been a theatre showcasing a continuing real life drama capsuling a mosaic of heartwarming social contributions from lead actors in the Kamat family and Christian Kruger's 'Kruger Foundation'.
In the 1980s, Shreedhar P Kamat had already made a name for himself as a lawyer in Karwar. His wife Shreelata had settled in as a housewife with a son and a daughter.
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Philanthropic by nature and upbringing, the Kamat couple had already involved themselves in activities of the Kanara Welfare Trust that runs a large number of educational institutions in the densely forested district.
The couple used to come across media reports about girl children getting abandoned by their mothers. Friends suggested that they start a home for destitute girl children. It was 1986. They, in collaboration with Kruger Foundation, picked abandoned infant girls, some as old as 15 days, and brought them home.
"We found girls, mostly infants, dumped in bushes, railway tracks and on sea beaches. With Kruger Foundation, we gave them a home, christened 'Gokul'. Gokul got an independent sprawling two-storeyed fully residential bungalow on the outskirts of Karwar in 1996, by which time the number of destitute girl children housed in Gokul had increased to 16," says Shreedhar.
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"In the process of taking care of my 18 children, I realised how society forces a mother to become so cruel as to abandon her own child so as to escape the ignominy," he says. An ever-smiling Shreelata does not care about what society thinks. She enjoys the sweat of hard work in making these girl children stand on their feet. "They call me aaee (mother) and my husband baba (father). Of the 16, 14 have grown into capable adults. Two are still residing in Gokul. One is in Class X and the other in Class XI. All the girls used to say - we are 17 sisters and one brother (including the children of the Kamats)," she says.
When you interact with the Kamat couple, do not term it, even by mistake, an orphanage. Shreedhar may be extremely polite, gentle and suave. But calling Gokul an orphanage gets his goat. "Please note that Gokul is not an orphanage. It is a 'Home' for destitute girl children," he will reprimand you, albeit gently. The brightest among the 16 have chartered their own course. Preeti did her masters in sociology and is an officer in a private bank; Asha did hers in computer application and is working with Tata Capitals as a senior manager in the CSR department; Geeta became an architect and works with Reliance group; Savitri is working in a private bank in Mumbai after a masters in computer application; Malavika too did her masters in the same and is now working with an electronics firm in Bengaluru; and, Kavita runs a cosmetics shop in Karwar and is happily married to a computer engineer.
Inspired by parents Shreedhar and Shreelata, son Devadatt Kamat too plunged into social work in his spare time as he moved to Delhi and started establishing himself as a lawyer in the Supreme Court. With Shreedar, he used to travel to remote tribal villages in connection with the Kanara Welfare Trust's educational initiatives.
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Devadatt found that villagers are yet to get basic healthcare facilities. Given their remoteness, no doctor was willing to stay and make primary health centres functional. He collaborated with local youth - Ravi Redkar, Sunil Desai, Jayanand Derekar and Chnadrakant Desai, who had started the Sanjeevani Seva Trust. In 2012, he donated a fully equipped mobile medical unit, which is now operated by the trust and the foundation and touches the lives of thousands of villagers every week.
The mobile medical unit has an experienced doctor, nurse and paramedics who treat patients, give them free medicine and transport emergency cases to hospitals in Karwar. The total number of beneficiaries crossed the 1-lakh mark in May this year.
There are many more philanthropic projects undertaken by Kamats and Kruger Foundation bringing smiles across communities and especially for the underprivileged.