That academic excellence is not a yardstick for excellence in life has once again been proven by Gurugram resident Ravi Kalra. The 51-year-old social worker had passed his school examinations “with great difficulty” and though he took admission in Delhi University for doing BA through correspondence, he never really studied or cleared even Part 1.
“It is not necessary that if you are poor in academics, you will not be able to excel in the exam of life too,” says Kalra, Founder of The Earth Saviours Foundation, an organisation that ensures the poor, homeless and abandoned senior citizens get a home as do the mentally disabled and deprived women.
Born to a Delhi Police cop father and a government servant mother, Kalra was drawn towards marital arts in class IX – it soon became a passion in which he plunged head-long, winning several state and national championships.
He later went to South Korea on a sports scholarship, and after completing his international master instructor degree course there, returned to open his own coaching centre – Universal Taekwondo Training Institute, in Pitampura, Delhi. Kalra also worked as a combat trainer and taught martial arts to police battalions and armed forces.
“I trained the national teams in many countries,” avers this 4th Dan Black Belt and International Master- Instructor in Taekwondo.
In 2007, he had a life-changing moment when he saw a poor boy and a dog scrounging for food together at a garbage bin.
“I was doing very well in my life at that time, earning good money. But that day I cursed myself for not doing anything for the poor boy. For days on end after that, I couldn’t sleep, till I pledged myself that I will dedicate my life in service to humanity,” he says.
Kalra has handled many social and environmental projects in the last 12 years, but is known for performing the last rites of over 8,000 unclaimed bodies so far.
“Don’t these people deserve a dignified ending?” he asks. Today, Kalra is respected in society, but there was a time when he was suspected of having ulterior motives. “Since I would bring the abandoned and the mentally challenged to my place, people thought I was into organ trade.
"Often I was beaten black and blue by the Delhi police, but nothing could divert me from the path of service I had chosen for myself.”
Hi sole focus now is to create the largest charitable rescue home in the world on the fouracre piece of land he has.
“We will be able to accommodate up to 2,000 people at this centre,” he says. And where will the money come from?
“I don’t know, but it will come,” he says, with resolve. “We have survived on donations by the common man till now. I am sure this project too will be funded. There are enough good samaritans around,” he adds.