By Jugraj Singh

There is a story told about ancient Punjab in which a King marries a marasan. Marasis are a poor, marginalized, lower caste community which historically was known for ballad singing and using their melodic voices to beg for roti (food).

After marriage, the marasan becomes Queen but she cannot change her habits or her lifestyle. During meals, she is not used to feasts and cannot eat her food. Days go by and she is unable to eat anything. Before lights and electricity, homes were illuminated in the evening and at night using divas (earthen lamps), and walls and archways had aalaas, special in-built shelves for the divas to be placed in.

Finally, the Queen had an idea. Before every meal, the Queen would have her chambermaids and servants take the food and put some of it in each of the aalaas of the palace. She imagined that each aalaa was a house and she would stand in front of each aalaa and beg to it and take the food as alms because this was the way that Marasis begged for food and she was thus able to eat and live happily ever after.

The first generation of Indians and Pakistanis in America are incredibly cheap. What truly unites first generation Indians and Pakistanis across all castes, religions, cultures and communities is third world cheapness. Much like the marasan who became Queen, third world habits and behaviors based upon generational poverty, economic deprivation, resource scarcity and colonizer trauma cannot be changed.

Hindus and Muslims are prominent religious communities across most of the Indian subcontinent, with Sikhs being limited mainly to North India. I would like to clarify my stance on organized religions. All organized religions are hypocritical and each is run by a corrupt, selfish priestly class which exploits the ignorance, helplessness and suffering of the adherents. Therefore, I have the utmost respect for organized religions. Let us examine each community’s cheapness.

While completing his residency and further training in Surgery in Chicago, New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia, my Father enjoyed travelling and visiting America’s east coast in the 70s and 80s. Amongst his favorite places to visit were the beaches of New Jersey, particularly Atlantic City and Ocean City.

At that time, the beaches in New Jersey had an entrance fee during the morning and afternoon hours. This was the time that mainstream Americans (white people) could be seen enjoying the beaches, taking part in sunbathing, swimming, playing volleyball, and having barbecues amongst other leisure and recreational activities. At 4:00 PM, the beaches would become free to the public.

Before 4:00 PM, Indians mostly of the Hindu community could be found sitting in expensive cars in the parking lots, waiting for the beaches to be made free to the public. At 4:00 PM, a magical demographic transition would take place: the beaches would become empty of first world white Americans and replaced by third world brown Americans. This transition looked like a scene from a Hollywood Zombie movie in which the Zombie horde descends upon an injured human! 

While my Father was employed at a hospital in Philadelphia, he became friends with many Indian and Pakistani doctors. A prominent gynecologist originally from Maharashtra (his wife also a gynecologist) were very well-known in the local Hindu community. This man had amassed a fortune and at that time lived in a mansion with a private tennis court and swimming pool.

He would come to my Father’s hospital as a consultant. This meant, amongst other things, that he had to pay for food and beverage. While my father was on rounds or in the operating room, the gynecologist would sometimes wait for a few hours to meet him.

Although this could be seen as a testament and devotion to friendship, the reality was that the doctor was so cheap that he would wait for my father to buy him a cup of coffee. At that time, a cup of coffee at the hospital cost 16 cents! This mansion-owning gynecologist with his own private swimming pool and tennis court would wait for hours because he was too cheap to spend 16 cents on a cup of coffee.  

My Father completed his residency in Chicago. There were many Indian and Pakistani doctors at his hospital. The Pakistani doctors were mostly Punjabi and some were Sindhi. My Father became good friends with Indian and Pakistani doctors there. My Father had a car but very few of the residents had cars and so when my Father had time off, they would ask him to drive them to different banks in the city.

They would open a new account because the banks would offer gifts to new customers, such as crockery, dishes, a set of crystal glasses or a dinner plate set. They would then close these accounts a few days later because they had no intention of banking. Their only purpose was to collect the free gifts and they were too cheap to travel by bus or taxi.

When my Father met with his Pakistani Muslim doctor friends, they would invite him over to their apartments and they liked to show their luxury collections of jewelry, watches, colognes, clothes and shoes. When my Father would ask how they were able to afford these expensive items, they would laugh and reply “Eh sadi l*n di kamayee hai Sardaraa!” (This is the earning of our penis!). Sardar is a term which predates Sikhism and historically has nothing to do with Sikhs, but over the past few centuries has become synonymous with a turbaned Sikh gentleman.

What the Pakistani doctors meant was that at that time, white American nurses would save up their money and date Pakistani doctors in the hopes of marrying a doctor. The nurses would buy them all of these expensive gifts but their romantic relationships rarely if ever led to marriage.

South Asian men have quite fixed beliefs regarding marriage: one is to marry within their own community. Marrying a white American woman is a last resort, life-or-death situation such as if a work or study visa gets denied or a fake refugee/fake asylum case gets rejected and if there is no other way to legally remain in America, marrying for a green card is justified.    

My Father met a well-known Pakistani cardiologist at a medical conference. He was married to an American woman and they had a daughter about the same age as my sister, so they would play together. When my Mother asked the wife how they met, she said that she was the doctor’s secretary and agreed to marry him because she “knew he had money.”

I don’t know if she ever got to make use of the doctor’s money, but my Father shared a story about the doctor’s generosity. During the conference, the meals for the doctors were covered by the conference hosts, but plates for spouses and family members had to be paid for. This doctor was so cheap that for every meal, he made his wife eat from his plate despite her protests.

My parents used to always attend my Father’s medical school alumni association (known as Patiala-wale) meeting which was held yearly in a different city usually in the US and sometimes in Canada. In 1985, the meeting was held in San Francisco at the Hyatt Regency.

This hotel was famous for a revolving restaurant at the top of the hotel and had panoramic windows which gave spectacular views of the San Francisco bay area, Golden Gate bridge, and downtown San Francisco. It is a sign of the times and of America’s decline that the revolving restaurant shut down about 20 years ago and remained closed for 17 years, and repaired only in 2024.

My parents enjoyed visiting the revolving restaurant for dessert every night. Up to 10:00 PM, the restaurant had a one beverage minimum in which guests had to purchase a beverage in order to sit in the restaurant. Beverages such as tea, coffee, soft drinks and fruit juice were hardly more than one dollar.

After 10:00 PM, the dinner crowd would thin out and the restaurant allowed guests to come in for free. Every night, the same thing would happen. At 10:00 PM, Punjabi (mostly JattSikh) doctors would start coming in and use the telephones in the lobby to call their friends and tell them “Ajo, hun free hogiya” (come up, it is free now).

My most favorite memories of attending the alumni meetings with my parents were when they were held in Vancouver, BC and once when the meeting was held at a resort in Dana Point, a beach town near San Diego, California. After dinner, drinking and dancing to deafeningly loud music, many Punjabis decided to continue the party outside and sit and drink by the swimming pool. As the night progressed, people became increasingly drunk.

When Punjabis become drunk, their inner poets and singers are unleashed, and someone will give an awful rendition of “Heer” (singing the poetry of the Ballad of Heer-Ranjha, a famous Punjabi literary masterpiece and romance similar to the west’s Romeo and Juliet). The manager kept coming and requesting everyone to keep the sound level down because it was past the middle of the night and other guests were complaining about the noise.

When drunk Punjabis go silent, another problem happens: their emotions mix with alcohol and their true feelings come out. Before calling it a night, the discussion became serious because at that time (the late 90s), some Indian doctors were losing their medical licenses due to being found guilty of Medicare fraud. I remember one drunk Jatt doctor say, “Jai sanu fraud vich farh leya te deport kita, aasi Pacific samundar vich shal marke mar javangey par vapis nahin jandey.” (If we are caught for fraud and going to be deported (to India), we will jump into the Pacific ocean and drown, but we will not go back.)

What I admire most about Indians, Pakistanis, Punjabis and particularly the JattSikh community is that of all the different communities of people I have met from across the world, I have never met any community which so passionately embodies the qualities of being cheap, materialistic, loyal to the American establishment, and in the case of Jatts, hating third world countries so much that they would rather drown in the Pacific ocean than be sent back. Perhaps Indians and Pakistanis are not cheap; this is their devotion to western capitalism.

I conclude with an excerpt from comedian Russell Peters’s show “Red, White and Brown:” “Look at all of these Indian faces. Indians just look upset that they had to spend money to be here tonight.

(in a thick Indian accent): “This is bullshit! I don’t know why I’m spending money to see someone that looks just like me! I can stay home and look in the mirror. For free!”

We are an endless supply of cheap jokes. You know what the best thing about it is? Indian people, we’re proud of our cheapness! You’re never going to insult us by calling us cheap, that’s the best part. You can walk up to an Indian and say, “You guys are cheap!”

(Indian accent): Thank you for noticing.

(Friend of person with Indian accent): “That guy just called you cheap.”

(Indian accent): No, no, no. He pronounced it “cheap,” but what he was saying was “smart.” Very smart, he was saying.

I’m just as f***in cheap as you. The difference is now, I have money. I’m just cheap in better stores. I’ll be looking at like, an Armani shirt; I hate when this happens. I’m looking at a shirt, from like a high-end designer, and I flip the tag over, and I see, “Made in India.” I’m stuck with a real dilemma: I’m like Shit! Do I buy this? Or do I call my Uncle? I wonder if he knows where this factory is.”

Jugraj Singh, MD, MHA, is a US-based writer who writes on world affairs.