People
Against All Odds:
City Health Works in New York
with Manmeet Kaur & Prabhjot Singh
Part II
PAUL HOND
Continued from yesterday …
PART II
Manmeet Kaur had just returned to New York after three years abroad on a human-rights fellowship when a friend invited her to a party.
It was August 2008. Her name was Manmeet Kaur Bindra then.
At the party, her friend introduced her to a brilliant young Cornell medical student who was getting his PhD in neural and genetic systems at Rockefeller University and working with the Columbia economist Jeffrey Sachs on the healthcare component of Sachs’s antipoverty Millennium Villages Project.
Days earlier, as part of a new spiritual commitment, he had stopped trimming his beard.
Manmeet was familiar with that practice. Her grandfather was a famous Sikh scholar in India, at Punjab University. She was devoted to him. Though she grew up in Baldwin on Long Island, she got to visit her grandfather several times in India and in America. His name was Harnam Singh Shan.
All Sikh males take the name Singh, meaning “lion.” All Sikh women take the name Kaur, which means “princess.” Though Manmeet had not yet taken the vows of the full Sikh spiritual discipline -- known as the “Khalsa” -- she and Prabhjot Singh were strikingly well-matched.
Here she was, the daughter of Sikh immigrants, preoccupied with labor issues at an early age, having worked weekends and summers in her parents’ dry-cleaning shop. There, she got to know the immigrant workers, listening to their stories about crossing the border. As a child worker, she gained further insights. By high school she wanted to be a human-rights lawyer.
She earned a degree in anthropology and history from Barnard College at Columbia, where she won a Third Millennium Foundation human-rights fellowship that began after graduation. Her first stop on the fellowship was South Africa where she worked with, and was inspired by, Mamelani Projects, a community-health group whose outreach method took into account factors like the patient’s employment situation and home life.
For the fellowship’s second half, she went to India and eventually got involved with LabourNet, a social enterprise in Bangalore that functioned as an intermediary between construction workers and employers. The idea was to improve worker standards, not through the labor-union method of negotiating contracts (the construction industry in India is around 80 percent informal), but by educating workers in health and finance and helping them get insurance that would move with them from job to job.
These experiences gave Manmeet a sense that when it came to implementing better living standards for people, the power of the law was limited. What she really wanted now was to create programs that could change whole systems.
And here he was: Prabhjot too was a systems person. A systems scientist. He too was raised in a casually practicing Sikh household. He left Kenya at age eight, when his father, amid growing violence against Indians, moved the family from Nairobi to East Lansing, Michigan, to do his postdoc at Michigan State University.
Afterward, the family migrated to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he -- Prabhjot Singh Dhadialla then -- finished high school. Since 2005, he’d been going to rural parts of sub-Saharan Africa and India, learning how people living in severe poverty built their own health networks and delivered care.
He, too, wanted to change whole systems. Build better ones.
“Would you like to meet for lunch?” Prabhjot said.
Manmeet and Prabhjot met for lunch. Ten weeks later, they were engaged.
They got married in October 2009. Manmeet embraced the full discipline of Sikhism, dropping her last name, Bindra, just as Manmeet had dropped Dhadialla. She began working for the Earth Institute, traveling to East and West Africa to consult on the financing and management strategies of the Millennium Villages project’s health-care workforce, both at the community-health level and in village clinics.
It was then that she began thinking about starting a community-health program in New York. What she needed was some business knowledge. A business plan. She applied to Columbia Business School, and got in.
* * * * *
On the evening of September 21, Manmeet came home from dinner and got her baby ready for bed.
This was an exceedingly busy time for Manmeet. The pilot project had started just days before, the culmination of three years of planning and fundraising, during which she had taken time off to give birth to Hukam.
After she returned from maternity leave, in December 2012, she hired a director of operations, Donya Williams, then spent the first quarter of 2013 cultivating relationships she had begun in B-school. It was back then, through her classes in the Social Enterprise Program, that she had gone into the neighborhood to meet people from community organizations, schools, food pantries, and churches. She’d wanted to know: was there a need in East Harlem for a program that hired and trained people from the community to coach their peers to prevent and manage chronic diseases?
Manmeet had found that there was.
Through the Entrepreneurial Greenhouse Program at the B-school, she met with philanthropies, making the case that high-risk patients, and especially those with chronic conditions, rarely saw doctors or knew how to manage their own ailments.
She had a plan to change that.
Two major funders came through: the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Robin Hood Foundation. Then Mount Sinai offered a service contract, paying City Health Works $100,000 for 2013, with $120,000 allotted for 2014.
Now, the nonprofit had to prove itself.
As Manmeet set little Hukam in his crib, her phone rang. The caller, she saw, was her husband’s walking companion. She answered.
The friend was calling from the street on Central Park North. He told Manmeet that Prabhjot had been attacked by a large group of young men on bikes. The youths punched him, knocked him down, and kicked him repeatedly. Thankfully, some passersby -- an elderly man, a nurse from St. Luke’s, and one or two others -- intervened, scattering the assailants and preventing a bad situation from getting far worse.
Manmeet was frightened, worried. But she wasn’t shocked. Prabhjot had been assaulted in 2003 and 2005, though not as badly.
The possibility of violence was a daily fact.
Manmeet’s worries only grew when she looked down at Hukam. In a few years, he, too, would have a turban on his head. Every Sikh man Manmeet knew had been bullied, harassed, intimidated.
What kind of world awaited her son?
She got a babysitter and rushed to the emergency room at Mount Sinai, where Prabhjot lay on a bed, bruised and bloodied. His jaw was fractured, his teeth knocked loose.
Manmeet held her husband’s hand.
The next morning, Manmeet and Prabhjot rented a car and drove up to Albany, where Manmeet had a family friend who was a maxillofacial surgeon. Prabhjot’s teeth needed to be stabilized. It was only by a family connection that he was able to receive, on a Sunday, immediate, first-rate care.
That same day, Simran Jeet Singh, a PhD candidate in Columbia’s Department of Religion and a close friend of Prabhjot Singh, wrote a piece for the Huffington Post titled “Hate Hits Home.” In it, he described what had happened to Prabhjot -- and what had happened to thousands of Sikhs across the country since September 11, 2001.
Prabhjot Singh, a wire in his jaw, was hardly alone.
Simran Singh’s article circulated fast. As Manmeet and Prabhjot drove back home from Albany on Monday, the phone calls started. Media requests. Reporters in the lobby. Cameras.
The attention was intense and new for the young couple. But there was no question about how they would handle it.
* * * * *
The convergence of social elements -- Sikh doctor/Ivy League professor is attacked in Harlem by a group of African-American teens shouting “Osama!” -- offered news outlets from New York to Delhi any number of story lines.
Some found it poignant that Prabhjot Singh and Simran Jeet Singh had, a year earlier, coauthored an op-ed in the New York Times called “How Hate Gets Counted,” in response to the August 2012 handgun attack on a suburban Milwaukee Gurdwara that left six Sikh-Americans dead before the white-supremacist shooter turned the gun on himself.
They argued in the article that the tendency of law enforcement and the media to portray the numerous attacks on Sikhs as cases of mistaken identity intended for Muslims ignored the history of violence against Sikh-Americans over the past hundred years.
They called on the FBI to begin tracking anti-Sikh violence.
Now, a year later, Prabhjot Singh spoke out again, this time in the September 24 edition of the Daily News.
“Even more important to me than my attackers’ being caught is that they are taught,” he wrote. “My tradition teaches me to value justice and accountability, and it also teaches me love, compassion, and understanding. This incident, while unfortunate, can help initiate a local conversation to create greater understanding within the community.”
Manmeet added her perspective on the news website, The Daily Beast:
“In the Sikh spirit of chardi kala (joyous spirit), and as the mother of our one-year-old boy, I want to work with our neighbors, local and global, to help create an environment in which our son has nothing to fear. My husband and I both live and work in Harlem and have devoted our careers to addressing conditions of poverty that are often drivers behind sad events like this.”
These responses brought fresh attention to Prabhjot as the enlightened doctor who, in the face of hatred and violence, had sounded a healing note.
A week after the attack, he came downstairs from his apartment to meet a reporter. He was still in pain, but recovering. In the lobby, the concierge, an offensive-tackle-sized Latino man, seeing Prabhjot for the first time since the incident, approached him with open arms and an expression of regret-filled sympathy.
“Dr. Singh,” he said, and drew the frail-looking physician into an embrace. “I’m so sorry for what happened. I got your back, Dr. Singh. I got you.”
“Thank you,” said Prabhjot. “Thank you.”
“I apologize for those kids. If I had been there --” The concierge broke off.
“It’s OK,” said Prabhjot.
* * * * *
Later, upstairs, seated on an orange couch in a sunny, white-walled room, Prabhjot cleared up a misconception about his religion that had been swirling since his statements.
“On a public basis, there has been a strong emphasis on the peaceful orientation of Sikhism,” he said. “Although that’s foundational, an important part of Sikhism is that, in order to keep peace and pursue justice and equality for all -- not just for Sikhs, but for humanity — it is crucial to engage in appropriate force when necessary.
“Sikhs have had a long military history of serving with the British, with the Allies in World War II, their own resistance in the 1500s against the Mughal armies, and of defending Hindus from mass Islamic conversions in India. This is part of an oral tradition that we grow up with: how to comport yourself in times of duress in an ethical manner.”
Prabhjot stressed that his own response shouldn’t necessarily be a model for others who have endured such an event.
“If someone went through this and feels angry or upset, I would never rob that person of his or her authentic emotions. If you’re upset and you’re hurt and you haven’t had time to process it, I would not, as a physician, say, ‘Pull up a smile and get out of there.’
“The difference with us is that we are so embedded here. And we’re fortunate to be part of such incredible resources that allow me to feel that I can do something, that there’s a meaningful way forward. There is no need for me to rattle my sabre simply because I can. Rather, I have to think about the fact that I’m going to be working in the same place, with the same people. So it’s not just a moment of errant generosity. It’s that we have a lot of work to do and we are doing it.”
* * * * *
The two coaches in the clinic finish their role-playing exercise. At the long table, Hoy-Rosas and the other coaches praise the older woman on her empathy and confidence. Hoy-Rosas then offers a critique.
“What I’d really liked to have seen here,” she says, “is some discussion of how the member was feeling, because the symptoms she had are basically hypoglycemia. Her sugar’s going to be low. I’d like to have seen encouragement for her to check her blood sugar the next time something like that happens, and a little education around what to do: ‘If that happens again, it’d be great if you checked your blood sugar. And if your sugar is lower than seventy, take a one-carb snack.’
“That’s a teachable moment right there. She did something she shouldn’t have done, she had a negative consequence: that’s a beautiful teachable moment. We don’t want to miss those.”
* * * * *
“The essential building blocks of Sikhism are oneness and love,” says Simran Jeet Singh, the PhD candidate in religion, who was born in San Antonio, Texas, and earned his Master’s degree at Harvard. “Every action that a Sikh takes is inspired by love and the intention of creating unity in the world.”
Simran names the three core precepts of the religion: Naam Juppna (remember the divine), Vund Chhukna (share your gifts), and Kirat Karni (live ethically and work honestly), saying, “The Sikh religion places emphasis on spiritual development and social contribution. We’re taught that loving worship is expressed through service, and Sikhs constantly try to integrate service into their professional work.”
Sikhism is a monotheistic, egalitarian religion (the assigning of “Singh” and “Kaur” was meant to erase the caste signifiers encoded in surnames integral to the Hindu community, but rejected in Sikh teachings), founded by Guru Nanak around the year 1500 in the Punjab. Nanak decried the conflict between Hindus and Muslims -- the two major faiths of the land then -- and preached a message of equality and unity, gaining followers called ‘Sikhs‘, or disciples.
“Guru Nanak set the precedent for how to live our lives,” says Simran Singh. “He constantly served those around him, and focused especially on serving people in need. Sikhs have long developed institutions that help underprivileged communities with all types of basic necessities, from food and shelter to education and medical attention.”
There are over 30 million Sikhs worldwide, mostly in the Punjab, and about a million in the US. As Prabhjot Singh points out, “99.9 percent of people with beards and turbans in America are Sikhs.”
* * * * *
“It was an uninviting block, treeless and barren, lined with soot-colored walk-ups that cast heavy shadows for most of the day,” wrote a future US President in his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father.
That description of East 94th Street between First and Second Avenue mostly holds, save for the bright blue awning of the Mount Sinai clinic.
30 years after Columbia undergrad Barry Obama sat on his fire escape to smoke cigarettes and “study the dusk washing blue over the city,” the work being done on this block may influence the future of President Obama’s landmark legislation. It was here that the student Obama got the phone call from Kenya about his father’s death, and it is here, now, that a doctor with roots in Kenya and Punjab is bringing from Africa the dream of the healing power of community.
Prabhjot and Manmeet know how real that power is.
At City Health Works, the coaches have finished their training and are working full-time. There are six coaches in all, and together they will be responsible for managing the goal-setting game plans of 500 people.
Almost two months after his assault, Prabhjot has regained his vigor, even as he continues to go through “heavy orthodontics.”
His assailants are still at large.
As the investigation continues, so does Prabhjot: he meets with students, sees his patients, works on his local and global health-care endeavors.
In mid-November, Prabhjot and Manmeet spend the holiday of Guru Nanak Gurpurab -- the birthday of Guru Nanak -- with Simran Singh at the Richmond Hill gurdwara in Queens, New York.
“Growing up, I didn’t really have strong ties within the Sikh community,” Manpreet says. “Prabhjot didn’t either. In the past, this response we’ve seen for Prabhjot couldn’t have happened, because we didn’t have much of a sangat, which in Sikhi is a community. Sangat is a really important part of our religion: having this community that you work with, that you do service with. We have that now.”
CONCLUDED
[Courtesy: Columbia Magazine. Edited for sikhchic.com]
February 16, 2014