#423: He Survived a Dynamite Blast at 14,000 Feet, Built a Fortune, Then Gave It All Up

Kevin Lowe: And in that moment, everything changes. Your entire perspective about life, about what you're doing, about what your life's purpose is.

Kevin Lowe: Today's guest is Dr. Abraham George, coming to us all the way from India.

Kevin Lowe: And what happened to him after that explosion might just be the most powerful story of reinvention that you've never heard.

Kevin Lowe: He went from a soldier in China to economist working on Wall Street here in America and He went from entrepreneur to educator, built a wildly successful company to then sell it all in pursuit of his life's passion.

Kevin Lowe: He sold it all, gave it all up in pursuit of something more about giving back to those who were less fortunate by helping out the people who needed help the most, helping the poorest of the poor, which he knew the way he could do that was through education.

Kevin Lowe: If you've ever wondered what it means to live a meaningful life, well, my friend, stay with today's episode because you are about to see for yourself exactly what that looks like in the story of Dr. Abraham George.

Kevin Lowe: With that, my friend, I welcome you to the 423rd episode of Grit, Grace, and Inspiration In case we have never met, well, I'm your host, Kevin Lowe.

Kevin Lowe: And I must say, it's an absolute joy and honor to have you here with me today.

Kevin Lowe: So my friend, I hope you'll stay tuned.

Kevin Lowe: Listen to my interview with Dr. George. I'm telling you, this guy is absolutely incredible.

Kevin Lowe: You are not going to regret this decision. So my friend, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. and I'll see you right after this quick What is happening my friend and welcome back to Grit, Grace and Inspiration.

Kevin Lowe: Today, I have the pleasure of being in the studio with a guy from, let's basically say, the other side of the world. It's Dr. Abraham George.

Kevin Lowe: Abraham, it is a pleasure. Welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Abraham George: Thank you, Kevin. Thank you for inviting me. I look forward to this.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, well, Abraham, I'm excited to get to explore your story.

Kevin Lowe: Everything that you've been doing. You have so many different chapters of this life's journey that you've been on.

Kevin Lowe: And honestly, where I would love to begin, though, is something that I'm just very interested in, honestly, is growing up where you did in India.

Kevin Lowe: And so would you mind taking us back in time to childhood and just giving us an idea of what was life like for you growing up as a kid?

Dr. Abraham George: This is interesting. I was born in a coastal town, the southernmost tip of India.

Dr. Abraham George: It's called Trivandrum.

Dr. Abraham George: Close by are the three oceans, the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. So it was a seaside life I had until I was 14.

Dr. Abraham George: I was fascinated by the military, seeing troops marching in the parade ground in front of our house.

Dr. Abraham George: And so I asked my parents to put me through officer's training.

Dr. Abraham George: I was able to get admission to the Indian Military Academy, National Defense Academy. and that puts you through four and a half years of training before you get your rank as a second lieutenant.

Dr. Abraham George: So I was 18 years.

Dr. Abraham George: When I became an officer. And my first posting was to the Himalayas.

Dr. Abraham George: You know, India had a war with China, and they had crossed over Tibet.

Dr. Abraham George: Came through a mountainous village called Tawang.

Dr. Abraham George: It's historic because that's the same way Dalai Lama, the current Dalai Lama came through when the Chinese were trying to get hold of him.

Dr. Abraham George: And he came through a valley called Sela, which is 14,000 feet above sea level, very high.

Dr. Abraham George: And he came all the way to a place called Bombdila, which is 8,000 feet.

Dr. Abraham George: And then the Indian government found him a place. So he and the Tibetans who escaped the Chinese persecution, we are able to set it up in a place called Darmashala.

Dr. Abraham George: I'm giving you a little bit of history. I don't know whether your audience enjoyed hearing about it.

Dr. Abraham George: Dalai Lama is still alive and he's searching for someone to follow him.

Dr. Abraham George: But anyway, my posting was to sail up, 14,000 feet.

Dr. Abraham George: That is the valley through which the Chinese, if they attack that sector, will have to come through.

Dr. Abraham George: And at that time, it was the highest battleground anywhere in the world, actually.

Dr. Abraham George: Oh, wow. Fully snow-covered, a shortage of oxygen and everything else.

Dr. Abraham George: And my mission with some few hundred soldiers was to establish medium gun, artillery gun positions there so that if they come through the valley, our troops could defend themselves.

Dr. Abraham George: So I was there for 11 months. That is the beginning of my story.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. Now, I guess you said that you were only 14 years old when you actually joined the military. Is that right?

Dr. Abraham George: As training for being an officer. Yes.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. That seems really young.

Dr. Abraham George: Yeah, I guess, I assume so. But you're 14, you're pretty, Pretty ready to do a lot of things, you know?

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, yeah. Now, what made you so compelled about joining the military?

Kevin Lowe: Was it something that you have family who were in the military?

Dr. Abraham George: No, nobody was in the military. I was watching every day from the terrace of our house, the soldiers marching up and down.

Dr. Abraham George: They have the morning parade. They were so synchronized and well-dressed and all the salutes and everything.

Dr. Abraham George: Just as a young man, 12 to 14, I was really amazed at the discipline and everything else.

Dr. Abraham George: And I said, well, if I can become an officer in the Indian Army, that'll be good.

Kevin Lowe: Yes. Well, I love it. That's amazing.

Kevin Lowe: So you were deployed, getting back to kind of where you had left off, you were deployed to this area, this border between India and China.

Kevin Lowe: What was that like for you, being deployed over there?

Kevin Lowe: I mean, were you guys encountering enemy fire soldiers? Was it a lot of downtime?

Kevin Lowe: What was that entire experience like?

Dr. Abraham George: Well, for a young man of 18, this was an adventure.

Dr. Abraham George: Nobody has ever stayed at that altitude for a long time.

Dr. Abraham George: Actually, in Sela, nobody had even stayed at all.

Dr. Abraham George: And so being sent with several hundred soldiers to look after and set up gun positions, that was a very serious responsibility.

Dr. Abraham George: We knew the Chinese were not too far from us, down the valley, within the artillery range.

Dr. Abraham George: They were on the border, the Tibetan side of the border.

Dr. Abraham George: They had conquered Tibet also, if you recall history.

Dr. Abraham George: And so, you know, it doesn't take China much time to get to where we are.

Dr. Abraham George: So we were very aware of the dangers. If they choose to attack us, we have to be pretty much ready.

Dr. Abraham George: The only consolation was that the infantry, I was in the artillery with guns, large guns.

Dr. Abraham George: The infantry was ahead of us. They were close to the border.

Dr. Abraham George: So they would be fighting if the Chinese were to cross over.

Kevin Lowe: Interesting. Okay. Okay. Well, during this time, just from, I believe, when we spoke before, I believe it was while you were deployed that you had told me that there were two different books you read during this point that I would say were probably very pivotal for you.

Kevin Lowe: Would you mind sharing with me what those books were?

Dr. Abraham George: Well, the one book was by Bertrand Russell, The History of Western Civilization.

Dr. Abraham George: And that's a very fascinating book.

Dr. Abraham George: And, you know, it's about more about his philosophy.

Dr. Abraham George: And in that book, he talks about war and peace.

Dr. Abraham George: And he blames politicians for getting into war and then telling your people that your country is in the right and the other side is evil and therefore you should kill them.

Dr. Abraham George: So that's what the politicians do. And then they sort of drive you to fight them. Veteran Russell didn't appreciate that type of thing.

Dr. Abraham George: He wanted politicians to always negotiate subtle disputes.

Dr. Abraham George: And anyway, in the book, there is a line which says, there is nothing right about war.

Dr. Abraham George: It is about who is left. That caught me.

Dr. Abraham George: Am I one of those who will be left if there is a war?

Dr. Abraham George: And I questioned the futility of being at war and being a soldier.

Dr. Abraham George: And I could not.

Dr. Abraham George: Think of being, you know, in a profession to kill the other side.

Dr. Abraham George: It's not something that excited me. I know that the military has a job to do. I was a good soldier.

Dr. Abraham George: I was ready to fight. Everything was there. I led my troops.

Dr. Abraham George: That's all true. But at the end of the day, I was asking myself, is this something I want to do the rest of my life?

Dr. Abraham George: And the other book was by Albert Schweitzer. Albert Schweitzer, a German doctor, he decided to go to Equatorial Africa, Central Africa.

Dr. Abraham George: And he traveled by a canoe through the jungles, rivers in the jungles.

Dr. Abraham George: And he ended up in a place, today it's called Gabon.

Dr. Abraham George: Nobody even hears about it. It's a country.

Dr. Abraham George: And he ended up in the thick of woods.

Dr. Abraham George: The animals, elephants and everything there. and he set up a clinic, small little clinic, where he told the doctor the locals to come to him if they needed any medical treatment.

Dr. Abraham George: They had wounds, they had some tropical illnesses, and he had carried with him a lot of medicine, and he was treating them. And they start coming to him.

Dr. Abraham George: Today, that is a large hospital.

Dr. Abraham George: You know, it's grown. Anyway, his life also fascinated me.

Dr. Abraham George: Here is a man goes to a place that he didn't know anything about, lives with animals and nature and everything else and helping poor people, tribals, who knew nothing about medicine.

Dr. Abraham George: And I found it extremely fascinating way to live.

Dr. Abraham George: And I wanted to do something like that, maybe not in medicine, because I didn't know anything about medicine.

Dr. Abraham George: And I thought I'll start a school for children, African tribal children. That was my ambition.

Dr. Abraham George: So those two books had a profound impact on me when I was in the Himalayas and until the end of my tenure there when I met with an accident.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. I mean, don't you find it kind of ironic how life works in the sense that you've been on this four-year journey, basically in the military, to get you to where you are today? You're deployed.

Kevin Lowe: You're in this area of the Himalayans.

Kevin Lowe: And then all of a sudden, because of these two books, and maybe it even ignited something that maybe was already inside of you, you start to question maybe the path that you're on and start to wonder, maybe there's something more for me, a greater purpose.

Kevin Lowe: I just find that very kind of...

Kevin Lowe: The great irony in that.

Dr. Abraham George: Yeah. You know, when you are alone, I was the only officer sent up with, I think, three or 400 soldiers. I forgot.

Dr. Abraham George: And I was engaged in blasting rocks, digging bunkers with blasting and removing the rocks and establishing our residents under the ground and placing the guns.

Dr. Abraham George: That was a job. And it was going on for all this time. 11 months until I left.

Dr. Abraham George: And I had a lot of time. I wasn't personally blasting.

Dr. Abraham George: I trained the soldiers how to do it. You know, there is a fuse fire, there is a detonator.

Dr. Abraham George: At the end of the detonator, you have gun cordon and other explosives, whichever type you want to use to blast huge mammoth rocks.

Dr. Abraham George: You know, you can imagine the Himalayan mountain of the rocks.

Dr. Abraham George: So I was trained to do that. So I trained the soldiers how to do it.

Dr. Abraham George: And then after a few sessions, I didn't have to do it. They would blast it.

Dr. Abraham George: They would blow the whistle and everybody would go and hide behind something, rocks or something.

Dr. Abraham George: And after one minute of the fuse fire burning, it will blast.

Dr. Abraham George: The dynamite will blast. And then they will come and remove all the rocks.

Dr. Abraham George: So that goes on all day, you know, the explosion. I used to joke, or at least I joked once to one of the senior soldiers that we were moving the mountain, the Himalayas.

Dr. Abraham George: And he told me, sir, no, we are not.

Dr. Abraham George: The Himalayan mountains cannot be moved.

Dr. Abraham George: You know, he was talking not just physically, he was saying it is too majestic for anyone to think that he can move.

Dr. Abraham George: My joke was not well appreciated, but anyway.

Dr. Abraham George: At the end of 11 months, during that time, I would climb another hill close by.

Dr. Abraham George: Not too far. I can barely see what is going on down below, but I can certainly hear the blasting.

Dr. Abraham George: That is where I would sit and look down. The clouds were below me.

Dr. Abraham George: You know, we are at 14,000. The clouds are like 8,000, 6,000, 9,000.

Dr. Abraham George: It's just moving like a sea, you know, through the valley.

Dr. Abraham George: And it's so majestic. You realize you are insignificant when you are there.

Dr. Abraham George: And you're there all day thinking about everything that you can think of.

Dr. Abraham George: As a young man, you're thinking about all the wonderful things life can offer too.

Dr. Abraham George: But I was also reading these books.

Dr. Abraham George: So it was a transformational period for me.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, yeah. You know, it's like sometimes in life, we have to get outside of our comfort zone to experience something new, a new mindset, a new just perspective on life.

Kevin Lowe: And I can't help but view exactly what you just described as that in this absolutely majestic setting of realizing there's got to be more.

Kevin Lowe: Talk to me what kind of happens next, because obviously I know there was an incident that happened that really kind of shifted everything for you?

Dr. Abraham George: Right, right. By then I had read the book, I was planning about how my future should be, but I didn't know how, I will get out of the military as, you know, officers have to serve for a certain period of time.

Dr. Abraham George: And then what will I do after that? I'm not trained for anything else.

Dr. Abraham George: I haven't had, you know, the kind of college education today's young people have.

Dr. Abraham George: So I was a little doubtful about my own future.

Dr. Abraham George: Anyway, at that time, you know, the military supplies, all this gun carton and fuse wires and detonators and everything.

Dr. Abraham George: And the fuse fire is very important because it gives you enough time after lighting to walk away and hide behind something.

Dr. Abraham George: And the rule is that you have to have 12 inches of fuse wire.

Dr. Abraham George: That gives you approximately a minute or more of time you could easily get somewhere and hide.

Dr. Abraham George: So hide or shelter.

Dr. Abraham George: Found that we are running short of fuse wire. We are doing a lot of blasting and the military wasn't resupplying us.

Dr. Abraham George: Maybe they were short of it. And so we cut the wire into half, six inches, and run a little faster.

Dr. Abraham George: And finally, we were almost finished with the fuse wire. So I had cut it down to three inches.

Dr. Abraham George: And that was a heck of a risk because you have barely 10 seconds or 15 seconds to escape.

Dr. Abraham George: And that time I made the decision that I cannot ask the soldiers to light it because if they made a mistake, didn't see the lighting, could get blown up and get killed. And I wouldn't be able to live with that.

Dr. Abraham George: So I said, I thought of myself as a superhero who could do almost anything. I said, I will light it.

Dr. Abraham George: So I started doing it. And they were trying to stop me from doing it.

Dr. Abraham George: They didn't want an officer, their leader to do this. But I insisted on it and I started doing it. First couple of days, everything went smoothly.

Dr. Abraham George: I light it, I lit it. I could see it caught fire and run. I had already pre-planned which rock I will hide behind.

Dr. Abraham George: And that just went on fine. On the third day, I believe, I didn't see the lighting.

Dr. Abraham George: Maybe I was careless. I'm not very sure. I don't recall all that.

Dr. Abraham George: But luckily, suddenly I saw the sizzling or the lighting, light running through the wire, almost reached the gun carton with the detonator.

Dr. Abraham George: I knew it would last in a moment.

Dr. Abraham George: I turned around and jumped and it did blast right behind me.

Dr. Abraham George: And my body was pierced with my piece of rock. My head was also injured.

Dr. Abraham George: I was covered by dust and rock pieces. And they had to dig me out of there and take me to the hospital.

Dr. Abraham George: So that was a turning point because there was absolutely no reason why God let me see it at this moment.

Dr. Abraham George: I asked myself, there must be a reason why I escaped. And I haven't found a reason.

Dr. Abraham George: Maybe what I'm doing today is the reason.

Dr. Abraham George: And I made up my mind, lying in the hospital bed, whatever it is, I will take on service to humanity.

Dr. Abraham George: I will help people who are poor, who are suffering, who have no means of getting out of their terrible situation.

Dr. Abraham George: So that was a decision I made. By then, I was only 18, 19 years old of age.

Dr. Abraham George: I had to stick around in the army for another two more years to get the discharge on medical grounds.

Dr. Abraham George: But the decision was made soon after this incident.

Kevin Lowe: What do you think at such a young age...

Kevin Lowe: What do you think instilled in you that purpose, that specific purpose?

Kevin Lowe: Where did that come from?

Dr. Abraham George: Well, that came from even younger days. I used to travel with my father.

Dr. Abraham George: My father had to go to villages and other places as part of his job.

Dr. Abraham George: And I would see how people are living.

Dr. Abraham George: And I noticed the caste system prevalent in those days.

Dr. Abraham George: It was soon after India became independent from the British, and you're probably not aware that for 1,500 years, India had a caste system whereby the different social status for different people, and the so-called Dalits, today they're called Dalits, and those days they were called the untouchables.

Dr. Abraham George: They couldn't even come anywhere near the upper caste. They couldn't touch anything.

Dr. Abraham George: They were not human for all practical purposes.

Dr. Abraham George: They were to clean the latrines and bury the dead animals.

Dr. Abraham George: And these are the jobs that are given to them. And I noticed all those things and I saw how they were living and what food they were eating.

Dr. Abraham George: And I felt miserable about it. But then as too young to comprehend what could be done, whether I'll ever have the capacity to do it, I just watched all those things. So it was there.

Dr. Abraham George: Maybe it was there that I wanted one day to do something for them.

Dr. Abraham George: Maybe it was there. But that service to people who are deprived and socially treated very poorly, that became my instant goal, the idea of human service.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. Wow. That's very profound.

Kevin Lowe: So I don't know where along the timeline it falls, but at some point in between being in the hospital from that dynamite explosion accident, you would actually end up moving to America. So how did that come about?

Dr. Abraham George: Well, it took two years to get a discharge from the military. And I was 21 by then.

Dr. Abraham George: And fortunately for me, my mother, a physicist, got a job in America as a professor and also as a research fellow at NASA.

Dr. Abraham George: You remember, those were the days, the Kennedy days, when America was sending the rocket to the moon and everybody was excited about what NASA was doing.

Dr. Abraham George: And my mother was taken in as a physicist.

Dr. Abraham George: She has a doctorate in physics. So she could support me and she sponsored my visa.

Dr. Abraham George: And those days, there was not much of difficulty to get a visa.

Dr. Abraham George: So I was able to come. After I came to America, I lived there with her for a little time in Alabama, of all places where she was.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. Okay.

Dr. Abraham George: She was working in Huntsville. That's why Alabama came about, you know, Huntsville, Alabama.

Dr. Abraham George: So I worked, I was at University of Alabama and Sanford University, the Southern Baptist College, a joint program.

Dr. Abraham George: And after one year, I went off to New York City.

Kevin Lowe: Okay, so you have to humor me because I can only imagine that had to be a culture shock, environmental shock to go from India to Alabama.

Dr. Abraham George: I remember it was 1968-69 period, and it was an exciting period.

Dr. Abraham George: And I had come from a place where I never felt discriminated by anyone.

Dr. Abraham George: You know, and here I am suddenly finding myself not at equal level with the majority of the people at that time. The whites were in Alabama.

Dr. Abraham George: But the good part of it is that I was inside the campus.

Dr. Abraham George: I stayed in the dorm in the campus. And campus life is somewhat different.

Dr. Abraham George: You know, the students are fairly okay, though they don't want to socially interact, especially the girls.

Dr. Abraham George: But otherwise, you go on. You know, there's not a serious problem.

Dr. Abraham George: And so the only thing was that I was in a Southern Baptist college.

Dr. Abraham George: Is Samford. And University of Alabama is also pretty religious at that time.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Wow. That is truly fascinating. I was not expecting Alabama to enter the picture for your story.

Kevin Lowe: And I mean, I'm equally just fascinated to hear the story of your mom being a physicist and working for NASA.

Kevin Lowe: I mean, your story has so many components that are incredible, but you would eventually, though, go on to earn two different master's degrees and your Ph.D.

Kevin Lowe: That is correct, right?

Dr. Abraham George: That's right. I went off to New York City for six months.

Dr. Abraham George: I worked at Standard & Poor's, a highly reputed organization like the Moody's.

Dr. Abraham George: I wanted to do a good job. This may fascinate you.

Dr. Abraham George: I want to do a good job. So I would do everything very fast.

Dr. Abraham George: So many numbers of financial data of companies that come out every day, and I have to record them and enter into the key punch computers.

Dr. Abraham George: And in my hurry, I would miss a zero here or add another zero.

Dr. Abraham George: And so 10 million will become 100 million. And so one million, you know.

Dr. Abraham George: Total disaster, total disaster. Within a few hours, it hits Wall Street, you know.

Dr. Abraham George: And my boss called and said, this job is not for you.

Dr. Abraham George: So I, you know, such a hardworking guy wanting to do many reports ends up losing my job.

Dr. Abraham George: But luckily I had applied for NYU for admission. And I was interviewed and the dean, the vice dean who interviewed me, was fascinated by my background.

Dr. Abraham George: You know, serving in the Himalayas, living in Alabama during the segregationist time.

Dr. Abraham George: He couldn't care what my education qualifications were.

Dr. Abraham George: He didn't care what GMAT score I had. He said, I don't care about all those things.

Dr. Abraham George: I can see that you are the kind of guy I want for NYU. So I'm going to give you that mission. I said, well, fabulous.

Dr. Abraham George: I would be the least qualified fellow to get in there.

Kevin Lowe: That is absolutely hysterical. So talk to me, I guess, about you did get in.

Kevin Lowe: How did you do in that program?

Dr. Abraham George: Well, I was determined. That's something maybe the army and other things made me to do well.

Dr. Abraham George: I knew one thing that America, at least at that time, if you do well, you have a good education and you do well in college, you will land a job and you can succeed in life, regardless of your race or foreign nationality.

Dr. Abraham George: But you still have a chance, maybe not as good as someone else, but still good enough.

Dr. Abraham George: So I had that faith that if I do well. So I worked hard. I never took a summer break.

Dr. Abraham George: I did extra classes in the evenings until I had to start teaching in some of the nearby colleges to earn some living, money for my living.

Dr. Abraham George: But I was willing to do anything to finish my program in five to six years, two masters and a PhD.

Dr. Abraham George: So it was a lot of hard work. But at that time, looking back, I never thought of it as hard work.

Dr. Abraham George: I thought of it as something I had to do, and I did.

Dr. Abraham George: And I had a lot of good fun with friends. I became the president of the student union for doctoral students.

Dr. Abraham George: So you can imagine, you know, you had some social life too.

Dr. Abraham George: So I did all those things until I finished my PhD.

Dr. Abraham George: And I got a job in Chemical Bank, which is now part of JP Morgan.

Dr. Abraham George: And I worked there for nearly two and a half years.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. Now, how many years did you just say that you worked there?

Dr. Abraham George: Yeah, two and a half years until I left them to start my own company.

Kevin Lowe: Okay. Now, what kind of company would you start?

Dr. Abraham George: Well, my field was international finance. And that was the time when President Nixon made a decision to float the dollar. The dollar used to be fixed to gold.

Dr. Abraham George: The gold, one dollar equal to so much gold. And all the currencies were then in turn were fixed to the dollar.

Dr. Abraham George: So everything was fixed. And there was so much pressure in the markets for those values to be changed.

Dr. Abraham George: And President Nixon made a decision to allow the currencies to float somewhat.

Dr. Abraham George: It's called managed float, where the central bank would intervene if the currency falls too much. So that was a transitional period.

Dr. Abraham George: And my educational background in international finance and corporate finance, I figured out that this change in the system would have a profound impact on corporations.

Dr. Abraham George: The value of their assets abroad will be worth less or more every minute when the currency value changes.

Dr. Abraham George: The dollar value will change. Or if you have to send money abroad, the amount of dollars you need to send would change.

Dr. Abraham George: All the remittances they make. So there are a lot of financial transactions a company has internationally.

Dr. Abraham George: And they will all be affected. So I decided that I'll design a system that will measure those impacts and more than that, account for it.

Dr. Abraham George: And also more than that, I would figure out a way how they can protect themselves from these currency fluctuations.

Dr. Abraham George: There were instruments like financial futures and later on financial options that you could execute, which will prevent loss. It's lost.

Dr. Abraham George: Of course, there's a cost for doing all those things.

Dr. Abraham George: So all those ideas came into my head and I decided to design a system to do that.

Dr. Abraham George: So my first company was a computerized tool being offered through what at that time was a timeshare system.

Dr. Abraham George: Timeshare being a central computer owned by General Electric or Honeywell sitting somewhere in Baltimore.

Dr. Abraham George: And everybody dials into that computer through their dumb terminals, not a PC, dumb terminals using a coupler and a telephone.

Dr. Abraham George: And they would tap the huge big computer of General Electric and run my program and pay General Electric a fee for doing that.

Dr. Abraham George: But it was very expensive to do that. So that's where I started.

Dr. Abraham George: I wrote the program to be lodged in General Electric computers and start selling it.

Dr. Abraham George: And I realized that I was too naive.

Dr. Abraham George: Companies were not ready to use computers for doing all these things.

Dr. Abraham George: They tell me, oh, we can do this in the back of an envelope.

Dr. Abraham George: Why do I need to spend all this money logging onto a computer?

Dr. Abraham George: And I tried to show them the value they would have by doing it.

Dr. Abraham George: And so I picked up a few clients. That's how I got started.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. You came a long way from misplacing zeros and that financial job to where you came in growing this company.

Kevin Lowe: That's truly fascinating. How long would you end up having that company for?

Dr. Abraham George: 25 years. It went through different phases.

Dr. Abraham George: The first phase was this timeshare we were sharing the computer of General Electric.

Dr. Abraham George: Then came the first Apple, you know, was introduced.

Dr. Abraham George: And then all other PCs came along. That changed the whole scenario because you don't have to dial into the General Electric computer.

Dr. Abraham George: You could execute those programs on your own machine.

Dr. Abraham George: But then the question is connecting to other computers in your own office as well as abroad, you know, for a company like Coca-Cola, which was my client, or General Electric for that matter.

Dr. Abraham George: They have subsidiaries everywhere. So they had to connect to those environments, again, through telephone lines, cable, telephone, you know, no Wi-Fi and all that. And they were expensive.

Dr. Abraham George: There's some cost associated with those things. But you could have a local power, computing power, as opposed to a central power owned by General Electric or someone else.

Dr. Abraham George: So that allowed me to sell applications for each PC, as opposed to one system to be lodged in the central computer.

Dr. Abraham George: And we started earning more money.

Dr. Abraham George: That's how the second phase of our company's growth took place with the advent of the PC.

Kevin Lowe: Okay. Okay. Fascinating. So my question that I keep coming back to as I'm listening to this and I'm I don't know, maybe my question is going to lead us into maybe the next kind of chapter in your story.

Kevin Lowe: But I'm listening to you talk about this, and it's fascinating what you created, what you did with this business.

Kevin Lowe: But I'm trying to understand how do we tie back to that revelation you had in the hospital about your purpose in life, about wanting to help and give back?

Kevin Lowe: Because this seems like a totally different avenue.

Dr. Abraham George: That's a very good question. When I came to America and got started, of course, I wanted a good career.

Dr. Abraham George: I wanted to make money. I wanted to live comfortably. I wanted to have my family.

Dr. Abraham George: All those goals were there.

Dr. Abraham George: But underneath all that, I had this desire of doing service.

Dr. Abraham George: So I said to myself, let me first make money, as much money as I can in a short time. if I can, which didn't happen. It took a long time, 25 years.

Dr. Abraham George: And when I do, then I can do what I promised myself.

Dr. Abraham George: So that is the connection. I was doing it for a purpose, the purpose being of going and serving somewhere among the poor people and, you know, impacting their lives.

Kevin Lowe: Okay. I love it. I love it. So I guess talk to me at that point.

Kevin Lowe: When do you decide? How do you decide?

Kevin Lowe: To leave what you've created to embark on a new chapter?

Dr. Abraham George: Once again, a very intuitive question. You know, I thought by 40, I would have earned enough money to do it. And it didn't happen.

Dr. Abraham George: Actually, the growth of my company took place between my ages, 40 and 50.

Dr. Abraham George: The company took off and we became a market leader in the field.

Dr. Abraham George: I started from my basement in my house. I ended up having office in New Jersey, Fairfield.

Dr. Abraham George: Then we had offices later on in California.

Dr. Abraham George: World Trade Center we had on the 32nd floor until the World Trade came down.

Dr. Abraham George: We had office in London and Brussels. So it grew.

Dr. Abraham George: And in the U.S., we were the leader. And the cost of our application also went up. So we were making good money.

Dr. Abraham George: But all this happened in the later part of my company's growth.

Dr. Abraham George: But I said to myself, this will go on forever. I can't be doing this, making money.

Dr. Abraham George: And so I promised myself before I have 50, I'll embark on this.

Dr. Abraham George: So a month before I turned 50, I left for India and established a foundation in India to start my work and found a place where I wanted to do the work, a remote village where I am talking to you right now.

Dr. Abraham George: It's interior part of Tamil Nadu near Bangalore.

Dr. Abraham George: And I got started just before I turned 50.

Dr. Abraham George: And then I came back and told my staff that I want to sell the company.

Dr. Abraham George: And we were fortunate enough to find a buyer in a Fortune 500 company, SunGuard.

Dr. Abraham George: They bought us. They kept me with the company for two more years.

Dr. Abraham George: I agreed to do that because when somebody buys a company, they don't want the head of the company to leave right away.

Dr. Abraham George: Because they're always afraid their employees may leave and so on.

Dr. Abraham George: They've got a lot of worries.

Dr. Abraham George: They have invested money into you. So I served for them for two years, again, on the anniversary, second anniversary, I resigned from that.

Dr. Abraham George: I said, that's enough time. So I devoted myself entirely to what I'm doing today at the age of 52.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Talk to me about where you're living.

Kevin Lowe: This, I believe you referred to as a remote village.

Kevin Lowe: How did you decide on this specific place? And how did you and how, I guess, did you even decide what to do to pursue that purpose?

Kevin Lowe: Because there's a lot of things that we can do when we're talking about helping the people who are, you know, underprivileged, underserved.

Kevin Lowe: How did you even come up with the entire concept that you're that you embarked upon?

Dr. Abraham George: Again, good question. In India, 75% of the people, even today, 30 years ago, when I got started even more, fall into a category of so-called different lower castes, not the lowest, but different lower castes.

Dr. Abraham George: And most of them are extremely poor or poor.

Dr. Abraham George: So I was interested in the poorest of the poor.

Dr. Abraham George: I wanted to educate their children so that they can break out of poverty. That was my idea.

Dr. Abraham George: And first to answer your first question, how did I end up here in this remote village?

Dr. Abraham George: That is not again planned.

Dr. Abraham George: I wanted to start somewhere where these people are living. These poor people are living.

Dr. Abraham George: There were like five, six hundred million over a hundred thousands of villages all over. So I had to choose someplace.

Dr. Abraham George: And a broker told me that he has a house in the village. He will take me there and show me.

Dr. Abraham George: And there is female infanticide killing, you know, girls, babies when they're born.

Dr. Abraham George: They are extremely poor and everything is an absolute poverty.

Dr. Abraham George: I'll take you there. I'll show you my village. And he showed me a piece of land, which I loved, by the lake and a little rocky terrain.

Dr. Abraham George: I didn't like flat land. I wandered up and down.

Dr. Abraham George: Maybe my mountainous background made me that way.

Dr. Abraham George: And so I bought this land to get the school started the idea of the school is somewhat different from what everyone was doing at that time that was that.

Dr. Abraham George: I felt that the way to change the lives of poor people is through their children, not trying to change them in their 30s and 40s.

Dr. Abraham George: They can never, they can't learn new things and so on. So I have to start from the very beginning.

Dr. Abraham George: That's the first conclusion I had. The second conclusion I had is that you can't wait for government to, you know, offer justice.

Dr. Abraham George: You know, they may give some food ration to them, they may give some stipend, they may set some quarter for admission to some jobs or some college.

Dr. Abraham George: People are still going to be prejudiced. People are going to treat them poorly.

Dr. Abraham George: They will be looked down. So nothing will change. And 1,500 years this has been going on. And how will I break it?

Dr. Abraham George: And my conclusion was, maybe that has something to do with the education I had at NYU.

Dr. Abraham George: My conclusion was that the path to social justice for these people is not from the top, but it has to come from the bottom.

Dr. Abraham George: These youngest of all, the children, four years of age children, they have to be brought up correctly. They have to be educated correctly.

Dr. Abraham George: They have to be motivated to succeed. And when they do, they go on to college and so on and they end up with good jobs.

Dr. Abraham George: They will transform their families. It will take a little while.

Dr. Abraham George: It is not handing out some free money today.

Dr. Abraham George: It will take some 18 years. But then once it gets going, each year you are adding to that pool and they carry their own families, their siblings, their neighbors, and this multiplies.

Dr. Abraham George: So I was looking at the multiplier effect of this.

Dr. Abraham George: And I said to myself, don't go to the government for help for solving the problem.

Dr. Abraham George: Solve the problem with the children, take the children and give them the opportunity to do well in life.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, what I love about that, and I think it's what just shows who you are as a person, who you are as a person with deep thought and insight is, you know, a lot of times when we want to do something and we want to help somebody and we're called to a purpose, we want to take the action that's going to give us the result right away.

Kevin Lowe: That's going to give us that, you know, that factor that like, oh, yes, we did good.

Kevin Lowe: We've we've done something. But you saw the bigger picture, the long term plan of truly making a lifelong impact by starting with the children.

Kevin Lowe: And I find that extremely just admirable, noble, and so incredible of you in the strategy that you took.

Dr. Abraham George: You hit the nail on the head. You see, the donors don't have patients for 18 years. Yes.

Dr. Abraham George: I go to them and say, give me X dollars, and I'll show you the result after 18 years.

Dr. Abraham George: They'll say, get lost. They want the quarterly reports, you know, how many people were benefited, how many people were fed, how many people, you know, whatever they want.

Dr. Abraham George: And luckily, because I had money, I didn't go to any of them for the first 15 years. I was spending my money.

Dr. Abraham George: I built everything and spent the money myself until I got into trouble during the 2008-2009 financial crisis, 7, 8, 9.

Dr. Abraham George: And then my son joined and we started asking for money.

Dr. Abraham George: And today, instead of one person running it, it's now an institution, an organization that is supported by hundreds and hundreds of donors, small and big.

Dr. Abraham George: And so we were able to build a second school called Shanti Bhavan in another location and double the size.

Dr. Abraham George: And I hope it will be a third school very soon.

Dr. Abraham George: That became possible with the help of other people. Not my money.

Dr. Abraham George: You know, money is something that runs out unless I'm, you know, someone very rich. And I'm not.

Dr. Abraham George: I did sell my company and made some good money.

Dr. Abraham George: But with losses and everything in the financial crisis, you know, it goes off.

Dr. Abraham George: But luckily, the world saw my work.

Dr. Abraham George: They saw what has been achieved in those 12 to 15 years of my work.

Dr. Abraham George: So they were willing to come forward and help me. So today, it's stronger than what it was when I was doing it myself with my money. And so...

Dr. Abraham George: That is the evolution of my foundation and Shandibawan School.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, that's absolutely fascinating. Wow.

Kevin Lowe: Well, Abraham, the whole reason that we even got introduced is that you actually have a book coming out.

Kevin Lowe: And I would love for you to talk to me about this book, what it's about, what compelled you to write this book, So share with me some insights into the book, because let us just say, you seem like you have enough going on in your life.

Kevin Lowe: Why add a book to the mix? I don't know, but I guess we're going to find out. So, yeah.

Dr. Abraham George: Right, right, right. Well, you know, I'm not getting younger, I'm getting older.

Dr. Abraham George: And I have to leave my story for the next generation of people and anyone else who wants to get into the social arena.

Dr. Abraham George: I can't just disappear one day without telling my story, how this happened.

Dr. Abraham George: And a lot of people ask me to tell my story like you did from the childhood, what made you what you are and the events that took place.

Dr. Abraham George: And I would take them all the way back to my army days to tell that.

Dr. Abraham George: So anyway, I am today I'm convinced that everyone within the limits of their capacity has a moral obligation to help others who are in need.

Dr. Abraham George: This is not, it's a reverence for life issue.

Dr. Abraham George: You can't close the window and shut the door and live happily inside when outside they don't have a full meal to eat. This is not acceptable.

Dr. Abraham George: It's a human duty and everyone.

Dr. Abraham George: And it doesn't have to be big. It can be very small, depending on your capacities.

Dr. Abraham George: But the need to serve others. And if everyone who's got money were to do according to their wealth, there will be no poverty in the world. But we don't have that situation.

Dr. Abraham George: So and I believe in a very simple proposition that we all have something inside us that is good, just that we don't act on it.

Dr. Abraham George: And, you know, some people define it as empathy. You have empathy, you see someone suffering, you know, you feel bad for that person.

Dr. Abraham George: That's not enough. Some say you should have compassion.

Dr. Abraham George: That is even better that you want to really do something.

Dr. Abraham George: You want to be involved with that person. That's also fine, but it's not enough.

Dr. Abraham George: And I say you need to do compassionate action.

Dr. Abraham George: You have to act on your compassion. Feeling is not going to make a difference to the other person unless you're willing to do something.

Dr. Abraham George: And you have to spend your money, you have to spend your time, you have to reach out.

Dr. Abraham George: In different ways, you can help another person. So my approach to this is, to the children I am bringing up, I tell them, listen, you must display your compassion in action and help others.

Dr. Abraham George: And if I can spread that word through my book, it will be, you know, impact a few people. That'll be wonderful.

Dr. Abraham George: That's all I can achieve, probably. So the book is coming out in January.

Dr. Abraham George: It's called Mountains to Cross. I meant by that, obstacles to overcome.

Dr. Abraham George: Mountains to cross, finding life's purpose in service.

Dr. Abraham George: That's the subtitle, finding life's purpose in service. And I carry it from the very beginning of my life and in some way making up my own self, my personality and character and so on, why I did what I did.

Dr. Abraham George: And also in the book, through the book, they can see how you can serve.

Dr. Abraham George: All the obstacles you're likely to come across.

Dr. Abraham George: How do you organize other people and motivate them?

Dr. Abraham George: All these things, a life experience is what I've recorded there.

Dr. Abraham George: And so I am hoping that a lot of people will buy it.

Dr. Abraham George: Some of them will want to do something, small or big. It doesn't matter, as I said before.

Dr. Abraham George: And in a small way, even after I've left this world, there will be an impact from what I'm writing down.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So amazing.

Dr. Abraham George: So powerful.

Kevin Lowe: You just yourself, your story is truly inspiring.

Kevin Lowe: I think to anyone and everyone to honestly realize that, you know, the future before us is ours for the taking.

Kevin Lowe: If we're willing to work for it, if we're willing to fight for it, that's what when I listen to you and I think of this journey you've taken us on all the way to you going full circle back to India, to this remote village, to give back, to make a difference in the other people's lives.

Kevin Lowe: It's truly remarkable and now with this book another way of just giving back you're truly an amazing guy

Dr. Abraham George: Thank you Kevin I want to tell your listeners that they will derive joy and satisfaction from what they do from their service you will see the eyes of the beneficiary you will see from their smiles the thankfulness You know, don't expect anything in return, but it is simply the realization when you wake up, you made another life a little better.

Dr. Abraham George: And that is your great service during your tenure in this planet.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, yeah, I love it.

Kevin Lowe: Abraham, for somebody who would love to learn more about supporting the causes that you are working on with the schools, the organizations, and plus the book that is coming out in January, is there any central place that we can send them that I can put in the episode show notes that we can direct people to?

Dr. Abraham George: Sure, sure. Very easy, Kevin. Very easy.

Dr. Abraham George: My name is the easiest name, Abraham for Abraham Lincoln, George for George Washington. Just remember these two questions.

Dr. Abraham George: So type Abraham George on Google.

Dr. Abraham George: You'll run into a few dozen websites. It'll take you to my project.

Dr. Abraham George: It'll take you to my book. It'll take you wherever you want to go.

Dr. Abraham George: And one will take you to another.

Dr. Abraham George: So you will have no problem finding me or work or the book.

Dr. Abraham George: If I give you websites and so on, you have to note down and all that.

Dr. Abraham George: Don't. Just remember my name, Abraham George.

Kevin Lowe: You the man from india are more american than we realized abraham george i absolutely love it

Dr. Abraham George: Well, I couldn't be more American than Abraham Lincoln, right?

Kevin Lowe: Oh, my goodness. I absolutely love that.

Kevin Lowe: Abraham, man, it has been an absolute just pleasure getting to meet you, to get to hear your story.

Kevin Lowe: I want to thank you in the most sincere way possible for taking the time out of your day to be here on the podcast.

Kevin Lowe: So thank you so, so much.

Dr. Abraham George: Thank you, Kevin. I hope we will occasionally keep in touch after the book is published. And maybe I'll have some reason to talk to you about the book a little more.

Dr. Abraham George: You know, it's up to your podcast, but I would love to keep in touch with you. Absolutely.

Kevin Lowe: Well, we will definitely be sure that happens. For you listening today, my friend, I hope you are smiling.

Kevin Lowe: I hope you feel as inspired as I do at this man's incredible story.

Kevin Lowe: And I think the most incredible part of his story, this idea of giving back.

Kevin Lowe: We can all do our part to help somebody out who maybe needs a helping hand. It doesn't take a lot.

Kevin Lowe: A lot of times it just takes you showing the compassion, the love and just simply caring about others.

Dr. Abraham George: That's what this is all about.

Kevin Lowe: So my friend, please be sure that you check out today's show notes where you will find a link to access the resources for today's guest.

Kevin Lowe: And most of all, I thank you for being here. Get out there and make this day amazing.