By age 25 she was married to Inder Singh and it became difficult to ascertain who among the two doted more on the other. She was also a gazetted officer and chairperson of the Food and Nutrition department at the Home Science College in Chandigarh. No student failed during the seven years she was to teach there. She also started taking Homemakers’ Classes which were attended in the evenings by girls from affluent and influential backgrounds. One of her students was the daughter-in-law of the then Governor of Punjab. So impressed was she by Deepi Singh’s teachings that she convinced the Governor to throw a dinner in honor of the frail young nutritionist. When Deepi Singh and her husband arrived in a red scooter at the gates of the Governor’s bungalow, they were stopped. The duo was informed in no uncertain manner by the sentries that this was no place for the ordinary gentry. The party was for the limousine classes. But the uniformed sentinels quickly realized their grave mistake, it was Deepi Singh who was the guest of honor that day!

LIFE IN AMERICA

Seven years into her directorship at Kaiser Permanente, one of the largest hospitals in the west coast of the USA, Mrs Singh decided she wanted to teach, and no longer wanted to be the paper-pushing administrator she had turned into. From hiring nutritionists, now she wanted to become one of them. She would have to take a cut in her salary. But she displayed the determination of old, and knew that she was not going to change her mind. The management, though, had to change their mind and not only did not let her go away, they even decided not to reduce her salary. For everyone at the hospital, “she was the little Indian lady that limps.” A special job profile was created for her. Now she was required to teach patient classes and provide consultation on diet to patients on a one-on-one basis. In all she worked 40 years at Kaiser, and another 8 years in India. Post-retirement, she has been flooded with requests for appearing on US television and radio, where she would discuss her favorite topics on diabetes, cholesterol and hypertension. Once when she gave her viewers a phone number, she received in excess of 300 calls, some came in from Canada.