HOUSTON: An Indian-American neurosurgeon has donated about $ 20 million, from his personal fortune, to build health facilities in his native village in Kerala. Dr Kumar Bahuleyan, born in a poor Dalit family in Chemmanakary, moved to the US where he made millions as a neurosurgeon and lived a lavish life, which included a Rolls-Royce, five Mercedes-Benz cars and an airplane.
But the 81-year-old's story took an interesting turn when he decided to donate his fortune to establish a neurosurgery hospital, a health clinic and a spa resort in Chemmanakary. "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, where he has lived since 1973. "I'm in a state of eternal nirvana," he said. "I have nothing else to achieve in life. My goal was to help my people.
I can die any time as a happy man". Those who know him are moved by Bahuleyan's spirit and energy. Bahuleyan was in private practice and served as a clinical associate professor in neurosurgery at the University at Buffalo before retiring in 1999.
He set up the Bahuleyan Charitable Foundation, which built a clinic in India for young children and pregnant women in 1993. It also installed toilets, roads and water supply for the villagers. Bahuleyan's foundation built the Indo-American Hospital Brain and Spine Centre in 1996, starting with 80 beds. To fund the efforts, the Foundation in 2004 opened the Kalathil Health Resorts, offering luxury rooms, health spas and exercise rooms.
Bahuleyan and his pathologist wife Indira Kartha now spend half the year in Buffalo and the other half in India, where Bahuleyan oversees his Foundation, moves around on a bicycle and still performs surgery almost daily. "My dream is to see this all running without my help, so I can pass away peacefully, knowing that I created something and gave something back," he said.
About 20 to 25 years ago, Bahuleyan returned to Chemmanakary and was struck by how little it had changed. "Not a road, no school, water supply or sanitary facilities," he said. "I saw the same people living in the same miserable conditions that I had grown up with." Bahuleyan says, he is still haunted by the cries of his siblings, all under eight years, who died of roundworm infection in the 1930s, after drinking polluted water.
As an "untouchable," Bahuleyan had to take a roundabout route to school because he wasn't allowed to pass within a few hundred yards of the Hindu temple. He attended a lower-caste school passing it at the age of 12 or 13. After attending a premedical school, Bahuleyan joined the medical college in Madras.
The local Government in Kerala sent him for neurosurgical training to Edinburgh, Scotland, where he spent six years before returning home. But here he could not get a job in his specialty. "They didn't know what to do with me. Many people didn't know what neurosurgery was," he said. So he went to Kingston, Ontario, then Albany Medical College, before coming to Buffalo.
Bahuleyan now plans to set up a new East India Seven Seas Sailing Company near the Arabian Sea. Early this summer, he spent 50 hours a week preparing at Zimmermann's Seven Seas Sailing School, located on the Buffalo ship canal.
Four sailboats are being shipped to India this month. The school plans to receive couples willing to spend a few weeks in India, to volunteer in Bahuleyan's hospital and to teach sailing.
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