Kavalkaranpatty stumps even the most fertile mind: green patches are rare, only hardy maize grows here during the brief monsoon, and the soil is bare and dry the rest of the year. This is where Dr Markus Merk, a German dentist and one of FIFA’s top referees, quietly arrives every June. Sometimes in November too. Sogospatty, a children’s village here, is Merk’s brainchild, born of his urge to reach out to some of India’s orphans. But this June, Merk won’t be able to make it. He will be on the the football fields, officiating as a referee at the World Cup. It’s another matter that few in Tiruchy know that the top referee frequents their town. Merk’s friend E Arivudai Nambi, a respected local who helped him realise his dream, has been restrained from allowing any form of publicity. In the last 15 years, Merk has visited the village, not far from the famous Rock Fort, at least 15 times, overseeing work at the orphanage and school he has set up on Nambi’s land. ‘‘He knows where the cheapest timber is sold and where the best antique furniture seller has tucked away his shop,” said Nambi. Once he walked 40 kms up and down to Mukambu, a scenic picnic spot. When a stunned Nambi asked him why he had trekked the distance in the sweltering heat, Merk shot back in faltering English: “For a football referee his legs are most important. I need to strengthen them.” Merk and his wife Birgit love Tiruchy’s vegetarian food, particularly the meals cooked by Nambi’s wife Baby Eliammal. ‘‘Their constant complaint was that they never got pure vegetarian food back home in Kaisserslautern in Germany (a town known for its passion for football). Every dish had meat, and vegetables, they said, were very expensive,” said Baby Eliammal. So the Merks feast on her dosas and white kuruma (made out of potatoes and peas) and a variety of rice dishes. “Merk rejected cutlery. He took pleasure in using his fingers to eat,” she said. It was in 1991 that Merk, a dentist, made his first trip to Tiruchy as part of a team participating in a health camp organised by the Dentists Association in Germany. ‘‘He was moved by the plight of the orphans and also got hooked to Tiruchy. His subsequent visits were made ostensibly to visit me but secretly to explore the town. We had become good friends,” said Nambi, then a liaison officer of the Church of South India. Like Nambi, Merk was unhappy that the generous flow of donations hardly reached the 3,500-odd orphans in homes run by the church. “The funds were used up mostly for administration purposes,” shrugged Nambi, who has supervised the running of the church’s orphanages for several years. It took Merk four years to persuade Nambi to join him in his dream project to create Sogospatty, set up on 8.5 acres. It took several more years for them to get government recognition for the school they run. Why Sogospatty? “Sogos means Society of Good Samaritans, and since the names of every village nearby ended in patty,” the children’s village came to be known as Sogospatty. Merk came down in 1997 and personally supervised the construction of the buildings for a few days. He spent nearly Rs 50 lakhs in creating the village. In 1998, Merk and his wife threw open the orphanage and pre-school buildings in a quiet lamp-lighting ceremony. Even the local media did not have a whiff of the event. About 40 children, both girls and boys, were taken into the orphanage and poor farmhands around the village sent their children to the school, which promised to be different. They had not seen their foreign benefactor, but it did not matter to them. The English-medium school charged a monthly fee of only Rs 50, rare in these parts. ‘‘I wanted the teachers to be paid from the fees given by the parents,” said Nambi. Merk had agreed. For Merk, the annual visits held a lot of excitement. He would visit the school, play football with the children, watch the teachers take classes. He would point out discrepancies in some of their teaching methods and applaud good work. He would bring the children gifts — stuffed teddies and toys. His wife and their three-year-old son, Benedict, spent time with the children. But even when in Germany, Merk monitored the functioning of the village by means of fax messages to Nambi, and later by e-mail. His attachment to India and Tamil Nadu only intensified with the years and he began to fund a few more projects — another school near Tiruchy and a home for the aged in Sindalacherry in Theni near Madurai. But Sogospatty remains dearest to him. ‘‘The greatness of the man is that he shuns publicity as passionately as he is devoted to his cause. Sogospatty, he says, is his second home,” said Nambi.
