Dr. Kang speaking at the Wisconson Sikh Temple Vigil at State Capitol on Aug 10, 2012
Sun, Mar 3rd, 2013 - YUBA CITY: Back in the 1980s when every Indian professional going to the US settled in big cities, one young doctor made a different choice. Dr Jasbir Kang, who came from Patiala to the US in 1986, decided to settle in the small but famous Yuba City which is known for producing the world’s biggest peach farmer Didar Singh Bains.
“I came to the US after finishing my MBBS from the Patiala Medical College and my marriage to my wife who is from the Bay (San Francisco) area. After doing my three-year residency in Chicago, I decided to settle in Yuba City,’’ says Dr Kang who was to go on to make a name for himself as a Sikh community leader.
“I could have taken a job in any bigger city. But a clinic in the Yuba City area was desperately looking for a physician. So I came here just to explore the opportunity. I did some temporary work here and soon doctor inside me felt that patients here were in desperate need of physicians. I also liked the similarity of Yuba City with Punjab and gradually started feeling at home here,’’ recalls Dr Kang who currently serves as Medical Director of Hospitalist Program at the local Rideout Memorial Hospital.
Coming from a highly educated family of Patiala, the young doctor felt that Yuba City’s Punjabi community was restricted to itself even though they had been living in the area for decades.
“At the time, all our social and religious activities were limited to our homes and our gurdwaras. So I, along with some others, thought that we need to reach out to society at large,’’ says Dr Kang.
Over the next two decades, even as he set about building his medical career in small-town America, the young Patiala doctor, along with like-minded people, decided to change the profile of the Punjabi community of America’s famous Punjab-da-Pind called Yuba City...
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