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

You're the one in charge.

And the reason you're there?

Well, because you're staring down the threat of going to war with China.

Then one day, while doing a routine dynamite blast, it goes off too soon.

The unexpected happens.

The explosion goes off when you weren't ready for it.

And you're buried beneath a pile of rocks and rubble, but you survive.

And in that moment, everything changes.

Your entire perspective about life, about what you're doing, about what your life's purpose is.

Today's guest is a Dr.

Abraham George coming to us all the way from India.

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

He went from a soldier in China to economist working on Wall Street here in America.

He went from entrepreneur to educator, built a wildly successful company to then sell it all in pursuit of his life's passion.

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.

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.

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

So, my friend, I hope you'll stay tuned, listen to my interview with Dr.

George.

I'm telling you, this guy is absolutely incredible.

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 intro.

Yeah, I got Grit Grayson Inspiration on my What is happening, my friend, and welcome back to Grit Grayson Inspiration.

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.

Abraham, it is a pleasure.

Welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Kevin.

Thank you for inviting me.

I look forward to this.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, well, Abraham, I'm excited to get to explore your story, everything that you've been doing.

You have so many different chapters of this life journey that you've been on.

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.

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?

SPEAKER_00: This is interesting.

I was born in a coastal town, the southernmost tip of India.

It's called Trivandra.

Close by 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.

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

And so I asked my parents to put me through officers' training.

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.

So I was 18 when I became an officer.

And my first posting was to the Himalayas.

You know, India had a war with China, and they had crossed over Tibet, came through a mountainous village called Tawang, is historic because that's the same way Dalai Lama, the Karam Dalai Lama came through when the Chinese were trying to get hold of him.

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

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

And then the Indian government found him a place so he and the Tibetans who escaped the Chinese persecution, we were able to set it up in a place called Dharmashalla.

I'm giving you a little bit of history.

I don't know whether your audience uh enjoyed hearing about it.

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

But anyway, my posting was to Sela, 14,000 feet.

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

And at that time it was the highest battleground anywhere in the world, actually.

Oh wow.

Fully snow covered, fully snow covered, a shortage of oxygen and everything else.

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

So I was there for 11 months.

That is the beginning of my story.

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: Now I guess you said that you were only 14 years old when you actually joined the military.

Is that right?

As uh training for for being an officer, yes.

Yeah, that seems really young.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I guess I I assume so.

But you're 14, you're pretty uh pretty ready to do a lot of things, you know?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.

Now, now what made you so compelled about joining the military?

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

SPEAKER_00: No, nobody was in the military.

I was watching every day from the terrace of our house, the soldiers marching up and down.

They were uh they have the morning parade.

They were so synchronized and well dressed, and all the salutes and everything.

It just as a young man, 12 to 14, I was really amazed at the discipline and everything else.

And I said, Well, if I can become an officer in the Indian Army, that'll be good.

SPEAKER_01: Yes.

Well, I love it.

That's amazing.

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.

What was that like for you being deployed over there?

I mean, were you guys encountering enemy fire soldiers?

Was it a lot of downtime?

What was that entire experience like?

SPEAKER_00: Well, for a young man of 18, this was an adventure.

Nobody has ever stayed at that altitude for a long time.

Actually, in Sela, nobody had uh even stayed at all.

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

We knew the Chinese were not too far from us, uh, down the valley, within the artillery range, they were on the on the border, the Tibetan side of the of the border.

They had conquered Tibet also, if you recall history.

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

So we were very aware of the dangers.

If they choose to attack us, we had to be pretty much ready.

Uh, the only consolation was that the infantry, I was in the artillery with guns, large guns, the infantry was ahead of us.

They were close to the border, so they would be fighting if the Chinese were to cross over.

SPEAKER_01: 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.

Would you mind sharing with me what those books were?

SPEAKER_00: Well, the one book was by Betrand Russell, The History of Western uh Civilization.

And that that's a very fascinating book.

And, you know, it's about more about his philosophy.

And in that book, he talks about war and peace, and he blames politicians for getting into war and then telling uh your people that your country is in the right and the other side is evil, and therefore you should kill them.

So that's what the politicians do, and then they sort of uh drive your you to fight them.

Bertram Russell didn't appreciate that type of thing.

He wanted uh politicians to always negotiate, settle disputes.

And uh anyway, in the book there is a line which says there is nothing right about war, it is about who is left.

Uh that caught me.

Um I one of those who will be left if there is a war.

And I questioned the futility of uh being a uh being at war and being a soldier, and I could not think of being you know in a profession to kill the other side.

It's not something that excited me.

I know that the military has a job to do.

I was a good soldier, I I was ready to fight, everything was there.

I led my troops, 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?

And the other book was by Albert Schweitzer.

Albert Schweitzer, a German doctor, he decided to go to Equatorial Africa, Central Africa, and he he traveled by a canoe through the jungles, rivers in the jungles, and he ended up in a place today is called Gabon.

Nobody even hears about it, it's a country.

And he ended up in the thick of woods, the animals, elephants, and everything there, and he set up a clinic, small little clinic, where he told the locals to come to him if they needed any medical treatment.

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

Today there is a large hospital, you know, it's grown.

Anyway, his life also fascinated me.

Here is a man who 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.

And I found it an extremely fascinating way to live.

And I wanted to do something like that, maybe not in medicine because I didn't know anything about medicine, and I thought I'll start a school for children, African tribal children.

That was my ambition.

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.

SPEAKER_01: 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 you're deployed, you're you're in this area of the Himalayans.

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.

I just find that very kind of um the great irony in that.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, uh, when you are alone, I was the only officer send up with uh, I think three or four hundred soldiers, I forgot.

And I was engaged in uh blasting rocks, digging bunkers uh with blasting and removing the rocks and establishing our uh residence under the ground and placing the guns.

That was a job, and uh it was going on for all this time, 11 months, uh until I left.

And I had a lot of time.

I wasn't personally blasting.

I trained the soldiers how to do it.

You know, there is a fuse fire, there is a detonator, at the end of the detonator, you have gun cotton and other explosives, whichever type you want to use, to blast huge mammoth rocks.

You know, you can imagine the Himalayan mountain with the rocks.

So I was trained to do that.

So I trained the soldiers how to do it, and then after a few uh sessions, I didn't have to do it.

They would blast it, they would blow the whistle, and everybody would go and hide behind something, rocks or something.

And uh after one minute of the fuse fire burning, it will uh blast, the dynamite will blast, and then they will come and remove all the rocks.

So that goes on all day.

You know, the explosion.

I used to joke, or at least I joked once to uh one of the senior soldiers that uh we were moving the mountain, the Himalayas.

And uh he told me, sir, no, we are not.

The Himalayan mountains cannot be moved.

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

My joke was not well appreciated, but anyway, I at the end of uh 11 months, I mean during that time I would climb another hill close by.

Not too far.

I I can barely see what is going on down below, but I can certainly hear the blasting.

That is where I would sit and look down.

The clouds were behind below me.

The you know, we are at 14,000, the clouds are like 8,000, 6,000, 9,000.

Uh it's just moving like a sea, you know, through the valley.

And it's so majestic, you realize you are insignificant when you are there.

And you are there all day thinking about everything that you can think of.

As a young man, you're thinking about all the wonderful things uh life can offer, too.

But I was also reading this, these books, so it was a transformational period for me.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.

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

And and I can't help but but view exactly what you just described as that in this absolutely majestic setting of realizing there's gotta be more.

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

SPEAKER_00: Right, right.

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

And then what will I do after that?

I'm not trained for anything else.

I haven't had you know the kind of college education today's young people have.

So I was uh a little doubtful about my own future.

Anyway, at that time, you know, the military supplies, all this gun cotton and fuse wires and detonators and everything.

And the fuse wire is very important because it gives you enough time after lighting to walk away and hide behind something.

And they the rule is that you have to have 12 inches of fuse wire.

That gives you approximately a minute or more of time.

Uh you could easily get somewhere and hide.

So, uh hide or shelter.

And I found that we are running short of fuse wire.

We are doing a lot of blasting, and the military uh wasn't resupplying us.

Maybe they were short of it.

And so we cut the wire into half, six inches, and run a little faster.

And finally, we were almost finished uh with the fuse wire.

So I had cut it down to three inches, and that was a heck of a risk because you have barely 10 seconds or 15 seconds to escape.

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.

So I said, I thought of myself as a superhero who could do almost anything.

I said, I will light it.

So I started doing it, and the the they were uh trying to stop me from doing it.

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.

I lighted, I lit it.

I could see it caught fire and run.

I have I had already pre-planned which rock I will hide behind.

And that just went on fine.

On the third day, I believe, I didn't see the lighting.

Maybe I was careless.

I'm not very sure.

I don't recall all that.

But luckily, suddenly I saw the sizzling or the lighting, uh light running through the wire, almost reached the gun cotton with the detonator.

I I knew it would blast in a moment.

I turned around and jumped, and it did blast right behind me, and I was my body was pierced with my piece of rock, my head was also injured, I was covered by dust and rock pieces, and they had to dig me out of there and take me to the hospital.

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

I asked myself, there must be a reason why I escaped, and I haven't found a reason.

Maybe what I'm doing today is the reason.

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

I will help people who are poor, who are suffering, who have uh no means of getting out of their terrible situation.

So that was a decision I made.

By then I was only 18, 19 years old of age.

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

But the decision was made soon after this incident.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

What do you think at such a young age?

What do you think instilled in you that purpose, that specific purpose?

Where did that come from?

SPEAKER_00: Well, that came from even younger days.

I used to travel with my father.

My father had to go to villages and other places as part of his job.

And I would see how people are living, and I noticed the caste system prevalent in those uh days.

It was soon after India became independent from the British.

And uh, you know, you probably not.

You know, aware that for 1500 years India had a caste system whereby there are different social status for different people.

And the so-called Dalits, today they're called Dalits, and those days they were called the untouchables.

They couldn't even come anywhere near the upper caste, they couldn't touch anything.

They were not human for all practical purposes.

They were to clean the latrines and bury the dead animals, and these are the jobs that were given to them.

And I noticed all those things, and I saw how they were living and what food they were eating, and I felt miserable about it.

But then I was too young to comprehend what could be done, whether I'll never have the capacity to do it.

I just watched all those things.

So it was there.

Maybe it was there that I wanted one day to do something for them.

Maybe it was there.

But that so service to people who are deprived and socially treated very poorly, that became my instant goal, the idea of human service.

SPEAKER_01: Wow.

Wow.

That's very profound.

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?

SPEAKER_00: Well, it took two years to get a discharge from the military.

And I was 21 by then.

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

You remember those were the days of Kennedy days when America was sending the rocket to the moon and everybody was excited about what NASA was doing.

And my mother was uh taken in as a physicist.

She has a doctorate in physics.

So she could support me and she sponsored my visa, and uh, those days there was not much of difficulty to get a visa.

So I was able to come after I came to America.

I lived there with her for a little time in Alabama for all places where she was.

Wow, okay.

Uh she was working in Huntsville, that's why Alabama came about, you know.

Wow.

Huntsville, Alabama.

So I worked there, I was with at the University of Alabama and Sanford University is the Southern Baptist College, a joint program, and uh after one year it went off to New York City.

SPEAKER_01: 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.

SPEAKER_00: Remember, it is 1968, 69 period.

And it was an exciting period.

And I had come from in a place where I never felt discriminated by anyone.

Uh, you know, and here I am suddenly finding myself not at equal level with uh the majority of the people at that time, the whites were in Alabama.

But uh the good part of it is that I was in inside the campus.

I stayed in the dorm in the campus, and campus life is somewhat different.

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

But otherwise, uh you go on, you know, there's not a serious problem.

And so uh the only thing was that I was in a Southern Baptist college uh in Stanford, and University of Alabama is also pretty religious at that time.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Wow, that is that is truly fascinating.

I was not expecting Alabama to enter the picture for your story, and and I mean, I'm equally just fascinated to hear the story of your mom being a physicist and working for NASA.

I mean, you your story has so many components that are incredible.

But um you would eventually, though, go on to earn two different master's degrees and your your PhD.

SPEAKER_00: That is correct, right?

That's right.

I went off to New York, New York City.

For six months, I worked at Standard and Poor's highly reputed organization like the Moody's.

I wanted to do a good job.

This may uh fascinate you.

I wanted to do a good job, so I would do everything very fast.

So many numbers of financial data of companies that come out every day, and I have to record them and enter into the keyponed computers.

And in my hurry, I would miss a zero here or add another zero, and so 10 million will become 100 million and so one million.

Total disaster, total disaster.

Within a few hours, he hits a Wall Street, you know.

And my boss called and said, This is job, it's not for you.

So I, you know, such a hard-working guy, wanting to do many reports, ends up losing my job.

But luckily I had applied for NYU for the admission, and um I was interviewed, and the dean, a vice dean who interviewed me, was fascinated by my background.

You know, so serving in the Himalayas, living in Alabama during the segregation time.

Yeah, he couldn't tell us what my educational qualifications were.

He didn't care what D Match score I had.

He said, I don't care about all those things.

He he I can see that you are the kind of guy I want for NYU.

So I'm going to give you the admission.

I said, Whoa, fabulous.

I I would be the least qualified fellow to get in there.

But I got there.

SPEAKER_01: That is absolutely hysterical.

So talk to me, I guess, about you did get in.

How did you do in that program?

SPEAKER_00: Well, I was determined.

That's something.

Maybe the army and other things made me to do well.

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, uh, you will land a job and you can succeed in life.

Regardless of your race or foreign nationality, but you still have a chance, maybe not as good as uh someone else, but still good enough.

So I had that faith that if I do well, so I worked hard, I never took a summer break, I did extra classes in the evenings until I had to start teaching in uh some of the nearby colleges to earn some living, uh money for my living, but I was willing to do anything to finish my program in five to six years, two masters and a PhD.

So it was a lot of hard work.

But I at that time, you know, looking back, I never thought of it as hard work.

I thought of it as something I had to do, and I did.

And I had a lot of good fun with friends.

I became the president of the student union for doctoral students.

So you can imagine, you know, you had some social life too.

So I did all those things until I finished my PhD, and I got a job in Chemical Bank, which is now part of JP Morgan, and I worked there for nearly two and a half years.

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: Now, how many years did you just say that you worked there?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, two and a half years until I uh left them to start my own company.

Okay, now what kind of company would you start?

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.

The gold, one dollar equal to so much gold.

And all the currencies were then in turn were fixed to the dollar.

So everything was fixed, and there was so much pressure in the markets for those values to be changed.

And President Nixon made a decision to allow the currencies to float somewhat.

It's called managed float, where the central bank would intervene if the currency falls too much.

So that was a transitional period.

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

The value of their assets abroad will be worth less or more every minute when the currency value changes, the dollar value will change.

Or if you have to send money abroad, the amount of dollars you need to send would change, all the remittances they make.

So there are a lot of financial transactions a company has with internationally, and they will all be affected.

So I decided that I'll design a system that will measure those impacts and more than that, uh account for it, and also more than that, I would figure out a way how they can protect themselves from these currency fluctuations.

There were instruments like financial futures and later on financial options that you could execute, which will prevent loss.

Of course, there's a cost for doing all those things.

So all those ideas came into my head, and I decided to design a system to do that.

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

Timeshare being uh a central computer owned by General Electric or Honeywell, uh sitting somewhere in Baltimore, and everybody dials into that computer through their dump terminals, not a PC, dump terminals using a coupler and a telephone, and they would tap the huge big computer of General Electric and run my program and pay General Electric a fee for doing that.

So, but it was very expensive to do that.

So that's where I started.

I wrote the program to be lodged in uh General Electric computers and start selling it, and I realized I was too naive.

Companies were not ready to use computers for doing all these things.

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

Uh why do I need to spend all this money logging onto a computer?

And I tried to show them the value they would have by doing it, and so I picked up a few clients.

That's how I got started.

SPEAKER_01: Wow.

You you came a long way from misplacing zeros and in and uh in in your that financial job to to where you you came in growing this company.

That's that's truly fascinating.

How long, how long would you end up having that company for?

SPEAKER_00: 25 years.

It went through different phases.

The first phase was this timeshare, we were sharing the computer of General Electric.

Then came the first Apple, you know, was introduced.

And then all other PCs came along.

That changed the whole scenario because you don't have to dial into a General Electric computer.

You could uh execute those programs on your own machine.

But then the question is connecting to uh other computers in your own office as well as abroad.

Uh, you know, for a company like a Coca-Cola, which was my client, or General Electric for that matter, 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.

There's some cost associated with those things.

But you could have local power, computing power as opposed to a central power uh owned by General Electric or someone else.

So that allowed me to sell applications for each PC as opposed to one system to be lodged in the central computer and be started earning more money.

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

SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay, fascinating.

So my question that I keep coming back to as I'm listening to this, and I don't know, maybe maybe my question's gonna lead us into maybe the next kind of chapter in your story, but I'm listening to you talk about this, and it's fascinating what you you you created, what you did with this business, 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, because this seems like a totally

different avenue.

SPEAKER_00: That's a that's a very good question.

When I came to America and got started, of course, I wanted a good career, I wanted to make money, I wanted to live comfortably, I wanted to have my family.

All those goals were there.

But underneath all that, I had this desire of doing service.

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

And when I do, then I can do what I promised myself.

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.

SPEAKER_01: Okay.

I love it.

I love it.

So I guess talk to me at that point.

When do you decide?

How do you decide to leave what you've created to embark on a new chapter?

SPEAKER_00: 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.

Actually, the growth of my company took place uh between my ages 40 and 50.

The company took off and we became a market leader in the field.

Uh, we had uh I started from my basement in my house.

I ended up having an office in New Jersey, Fairfield.

Then we had offices later on in California, World Trade Center.

We had on the 32nd floor until the World Trade came down.

We had an office in London and Brussels.

So it grew.

And uh in the US, we were the leader, and the cost of our application also went up, so we were making good money.

But all this happened in the later part of my company's growth.

But I said to myself, this will go on forever.

I can't be doing this, making money.

And so I promised myself, before I'm 50, I'll embark on this.

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.

It's uh it's uh interior, part of uh Tamil Nadu near Bangalore.

And I got started just before I turned 50.

And then uh I came back and told my staff that I want to sell the company.

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

Uh, they bought us, they kept me with the company for two more years.

I agreed to do that because when somebody buys a company, they don't want to want the head of the company to leave right away because they are always afraid the employees may leave and so on.

They got a lot of worries, they have invested money into you.

So I served for them for two years.

Again, on the anniversary, second anniversary, I resigned from that.

I said, that's enough time.

So I devoted uh myself entirely to what I am doing today at the age of 52.

SPEAKER_01: Wow.

Wow, wow, wow.

Talk to me about where you're living.

This I believe you referred to it as a remote village.

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?

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.

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

SPEAKER_00: Again, good question.

You know, in India, uh 75% of the people, even today, but 30 years ago when I got started, even more, fall into a category of so-called different lower caste, not the lowest, but different lower caste.

And most of them are extremely poor or poor.

So I was interested in the poorest of the poor.

I wanted to educate their children so that they can break out of poverty.

That was my idea.

And first to answer your first question, how did I end up here in this remote village?

That is uh not again planned.

I wanted to start somewhere where these people are living, these poor people are living.

Uh, there were like five, six hundred million over a hundred thousand of villages all over.

So I had to choose someplace.

And a broker told me that he has a house in the village.

He will take me there and show me there is female infanticide killing, you know, girls, babies when they're born.

They are extremely poor and everything is at absolute poverty.

I'll take you there, I'll show you my village.

And uh that's and he showed me a piece of land which I loved uh by the lake and a little uh rocky terrain.

I I didn't like flat land.

I wandered up and down, maybe my mountainous background made me that way.

And so I bought this land to get the school started.

The idea of the school is uh somewhat different from what everyone was doing at that time, and that was that 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 forties.

They can never they can't learn new things and so on.

So I have to start from the very beginning.

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.

You know, they may give some food, a ration to them, they may give some stipend, they may set some quarter for admission to some jobs or some college, but people are still going to be prejudiced, people are going to treat them poorly, uh, they will be looked down, so nothing will change.

And 1,500 years this has been going on, and how will I break it?

And my conclusion was maybe that has something to do with the education I had at NYU.

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.

These youngest of all, the children, four years of a children, uh they have to be brought up correctly, they have to be educated correctly, 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, they will transform their families.

It'll take a little while.

It is not handing out some free money today.

It'll 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.

So I was looking at the multiplier effect of this, and I said to myself, don't go to the government for help.

For solving the problem.

Solve the problem with the children.

Take the children and give them the opportunity to do well in life.

SPEAKER_01: 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 with deep thought and insight is, you know, a lot of times when 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.

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

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

SPEAKER_00: You hit the nail on the head.

You see, the donors don't have patience for 18 years.

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

They'll say, get lost.

They want at the quarterly reports, you know, how many people were benefited, how many people were fed, how many people, you know, whatever they want.

And luckily, because I had money, I didn't go to any of them for the first 15 years.

I was spending my money.

I built everything and spent the money myself until I got into trouble during the 2008, 2009 financial crisis, seven, eight, nine.

And then my son joined and we started asking for money.

And today, uh, 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.

And uh so we were able to build a second school called Shanti Bhavan at another location and double the size.

And I hope it will be a third school very soon.

That became possible with the help of other people, not my money.

You know, money is something that runs out unless I'm, you know, someone very rich, and I'm not.

I did sell some uh my company and made some good money, but with the losses and everything in the financial crisis, uh, you know, it goes off.

But luckily, the world saw my work.

They saw what has been achieved in those 12 to 15 years of my work, 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 that is the evolution of the my foundation and Shandi Bowen School.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's absolutely fascinating.

Wow.

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

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.

Why add a book to the mix?

I don't know, but um, I guess we're gonna find out.

SPEAKER_00: So right, right, right.

Well, you know, I'm not getting younger, I'm getting older, and I have to leave to leave my story for the next generation of people and anyone else who wants to get into the social arena.

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

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.

And I have to take them all the way back to my army days to tell that.

Uh so anyway, I am today I am convinced that everyone within the limits of their capacity has a moral obligation to help others who are in need.

This is this is not, it's a reverence for life issue.

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.

It's a human duty and everyone.

So, uh and it doesn't have to be big, it can be very small, depending on your capacities, but the need to serve others, and if everyone who's got money where to do according to their wealth, there will be no poverty in the world.

But we don't have that situation.

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.

And, you know, some people define as uh empathy.

You have empathy, you see someone suffering, you know, you feel bad for that person.

That's not enough.

Uh some say you should have compassion.

Uh, that is even better that you want to to really do something, you want to be involved with that person.

That's also fine, but it's not enough.

And I say you need to have you to do compassion in action.

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, and you have to spend your money, you have to spend your time, you have to reach out.

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.

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

That's all I can achieve, probably.

So the book is coming out in January.

It's called Mountains to Cross.

I meant by that, obstacles to overcome, Mountains to Cross, Finding Life's Purpose in Service.

That's the subtitle, Finding Life's Purpose in Service.

And I carry it from the very beginning of my life and uh in some way making of my own self, my personality and character, and so on, why I did what I did.

And also in the book, through the book, they can see how you can serve, or the obstacles you are likely to come across.

How do you organize other people and motivate them?

All these things, life experiences, what I have recorded there.

And so I am hoping that a lot of people will buy it, some of them will want to do something, small or big, it doesn't matter, as I said before.

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

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.

Wow.

So amazing, so powerful.

You just yourself, your story is truly inspiring, I think, to anyone and everyone to honestly realize that you know, the future before us is it's ours for the taking, if we're willing to work for it, if we're willing to fight for it.

That's that's what when I listen to you and I think of 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.

It's truly remarkable.

And now with with this book, another way of just giving back, you're you're truly an amazing guy.

SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Kevin.

I want to tell your listeners that they will derive joy and satisfaction from what they do in from their service.

You'll see in the eyes of the beneficiary, you'll see from their smiles, their thankfulness.

You know, don't expect anything in return, uh, but it is simply the realization when you wake up, you made another life a little better.

And that is your great service during your tenure in this planet.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, I love it.

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 you the book that is coming out in January.

Is there any central place that we can send them that I can put in in the episode show notes that we can direct people to?

SPEAKER_00: Sure, sure.

Very easy, Kevin.

Very easy.

My name is the easiest name: Abraham for Abraham uh Lincoln, George for George Washington.

Just remember these two presents.

So type type Abraham George on Google.

You will run into a few dozen websites, it'll take you to my project, it'll take you to my book, it'll take you wherever you want to go.

And one will take you to another.

So you will have no problem finding me or work or the book.

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

Don't just remember my name, Abraham George.

SPEAKER_01: You, the man from India, are more American than we realized.

Abraham George.

I absolutely love it.

SPEAKER_00: Well, I couldn't, I could be more American than Abraham Lincoln and Joey Washington, right?

SPEAKER_01: Oh my goodness.

I absolutely love that.

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

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

So um, so thank you so, so much.

SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Kevin.

I hope um we will occasionally keep in touch after the book is published, and it uh maybe I'll have some reason to talk to you about the book a little more.

You know, it's up to your podcast, but uh I would love to keep in touch with you.

SPEAKER_01: Uh absolutely.

Well, we will definitely be sure that happens.

For you listening today, my friend.

I hope you are smiling.

I hope you feel as inspired as I do.

Uh this man's incredible story.

And I think the most incredible part of his story is the idea of giving back.

We can all do our part to help somebody out who maybe needs a helping hand.

It doesn't take a lot.

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

That's what this is all about.

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.

And most of all, I thank you for being here.

Get out there and make this day amazing.

SPEAKER_02: I've got great grace and inspiration on my mind.