Positivity: Neurosurgeon donates $20 million to his native Indian village

From Buffalo, NY:

Updated: 07/30/07 7:26 AM

He was born into the “untouchable” caste in India, so poor that he didn’t wear his first pair of shoes until he went to medical school.
Then he came to America, where he made millions as a Buffalo neurosurgeon and lived a lavish life, once owning a Rolls-Royce, five Mercedes-Benzes and an airplane.

But he felt empty, almost soulless. So he donated his personal fortune — some $20 million — to establish a neurosurgery hospital, a health clinic and a spa resort in his native Indian village, Chemmanakary.

Now, at 81, Dr. Kumar Bahuleyan has come full circle: from dire poverty in India, to the lifestyles of the rich in America and back to his native village, where he’s traded his Mercedes for a bicycle.

“I was born with nothing; I was educated by the people of that village, and this is what I owe to them,” Bahuleyan said recently in Buffalo.

“I’m in a state of nirvana, eternal nirvana,” he said. “I have nothing else to achieve in life. This was my goal, to help my people. I can die any time, as a happy man.”

The Bahuleyan story seems almost too good to be true, a rags-toriches story that has taken him back to his impoverished roots.

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