Page 59 - MASALA VOL 8 ISSUE 3 DECEMBER 2016 – JANUARY 2017

...I managed to survive

in San Francisco and left

with a dental degree.

An American soldier and a friend in Korat urged Kanwaljit to go
to college in the States. “That was a green light for me,” he says.
Using the soldier’s military address, Kanwaljit wrote to scores of
colleges and universities in the States seeking a scholarship.
“I had good grades in high school in India, so I thought I could get
a scholarship abroad.”

Kanwaljit was not off ered a scholarship immediately, but he was
given a chance in the beginning to work his way through college
at California State University, Chico. He fl ew from Bangkok to
San Francisco in January 1967. At the time, he was 19, bearded
and wore a turban.“I called the assistant dean at two o’clock in
the morning,” Kanwaljit remembers. “The dean took me into his
house for a short time and then found me a host family. I had
help in fi nding an apartment in a garage for US$20 a month, and I
bought what I needed at second-hand shops. In six months, I had
a scholarship and I was enrolled in pre-med.”

Kanwaljit had to work to make ends meet. He took a summer job
as a dishwasher and busboy at a café under a casino in Reno,
Nevada and worked in the university’s library. But for Kanwaljit to
assimilate and fi t in, he had to make a very diffi cult decision. He
fi nally cut his hair and shaved. “It’s against the Sikh religion to do
that,” he says. “I called my father and told him about it. He said
it’s over. He disowned me. I was an outcast, a lafanga, meaning a
worthless kid. My father made up his mind, and my mother went
along with him.”
going to class and then back to work after fi ve. I even sold beer
Kanwaljit graduated from California State University, Chico in at Oakland Raider football games at the Oakland Coliseum. I
1971 with a bachelor’s degree in biology. Later that year, after had no car and relied on a bicycle or friends to get around. I
being rejected by medical schools, he started graduate school admitted to the University of the Pacifi c that I had signed for
at University of California, Davis to pursue a master’s degree my father and brothers. In the end, I made an arrangement
in physiology. “I was working at UC Davis with Dr. Gary Moberg, with the school to make monthly payments. I managed to
my advisor, who had a research grant from the (U.S.) National survive in San Francisco and left with a dental degree.”
Institute of Health,” he says. “I was provided with a nice stipend
while doing research in the fi eld of endocrinology, but I didn’t Now, Kanwaljit’s life took another turn, for the good, that
fi nish my graduate studies. I was accepted at the University eventually put him on a path of achieving the professional
of the Pacifi c School of Dentistry in San Francisco. The dental success he dreamed of as a boy back in Thailand. He began
school asked me how I was going to support myself. Out of fear of work as a dentist at the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation in
being rejected, I signed all the fi nancial documents in my father’s northern California with a population of 900 people. “The
and brothers’ name for support. I got accepted.” tribe provided free care for its members under a programme
with the U.S. Bureau of Indian Aff airs.” He began applying for
“But in my second year I got into trouble. I was behind in paying a green card that would enable him to live permanently in the
my tuition. I had been working at a hospital as a blood drawer, United States. At fi rst he was denied, but the Hoopa Valley
a phlebotomist, working from six to eight in the morning, then tribe sponsored him and in the end he received his green card.

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