It’s true: Indian parents want their children to become doctors. Brar always figured she’d become one, and so headed off to UC Riverside to study biology.

But she wasn't happy, and had to break the news to parents she knew would be disappointed. Brar moved home, took out student loans and enrolled at CSUB, working at McKinley Elementary School and convalescent hospital to pay bills.

She loved the intimacy, direct access to quality instructors and the ability to participate in research at CSUB.

“At UC Riverside I was stuck in these huge classes. In the labs, there were like 150 people being taught by a teacher’s aide,” Brar said. “Now I come to CSUB and I have maybe 15 or 20 kids in my class being taught by professors. And it was the same material."

She parlayed her 2000 biology degree into a job as a chemist, then earned a master’s in healthcare administration two years later and got the job as assistant to Clinica CEO Steve Schilling. Brar found it “amazing” to learn about the operations, funding and politics of federally qualified health centers.

But life had different plans for her.

What she really excelled at was managing people, Rick Jhaj, her brother, said. It’s what has become her niche at Countryside.

“Everyone (in the family) brings something unique to the table, and Raji is really good with people,” said Rick, who specializes in construction. “She’s a good leader. She knows how to motivate people. Even growing up, people would come to her with their problems.”

Countryside Market & Restaurants has now grown to include nine gas stations, seven Taco Bells, 10 Subways, a construction company and a retail developer. It’s also gotten into the car wash business in Taft.

Brar’s dad leads the company; running it with him are Brar’s stepmother, brother, husband, sister-in-laws and stepbrother. It’s truly a team effort, Brar said, not just referring to family.

“My dad makes sure we understand that the reason we are successful is because every person has brought value to this,” Brar said. “And that includes everyone, including the people who are representing us on the cash register and the folks cooking in the back.”

Brar got to know the people of Arvin well while running that first Subway, and they convinced her to run for the City Council. She served from November 2006 to June 2008 before giving it up for family reasons; she became pregnant with her second son.

Brar’s tenure was brief, but groundbreaking. She was the first Sikh woman elected to a city council in California. 

She learned on the council that Arvin had the worst ozone pollution in the country, and so fought her way onto the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District board. Brar was one of only a few air board members who opposed two major pollution cleanup proposals because they believed those plans took too long to address dirty air concerns, according to The Bakersfield Californian.

“She was very good in that position,” said former state Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, now a PR consultant and member of the California Air Resources Board. “The small cities finally got a voice, there weren’t just the voices of Bakersfield or Fresno.”

Five years ago, Brar and her friend Mona Gill were filled with pride watching the first Sikh float participate in the Rose Parade. It reminded them of all the hard work their parents put into getting to America and building a better life for their families here.

“What are we doing?” Brar and Gill asked each other.

The result was the Bakersfield Sikh Women’s Association. It started out raising $5,000 in scholarship money awarded to then-Ridgeview High senior Taranpreet Kaur, the daughter of a truck driver and factory worker whose family moved here from India when she was 12.

The money helped Kaur pay for her first year at UC Irvine but more importantly, boosted her parents’ confidence that she could and should go away to college, something many Sikh parents are hesitant to see their children do, she said.

“It really pushed them to believe in me and to let me follow my dreams to pursue college where I wanted to go,” said Kaur, now a 23-year-old IT consultant for a mortgage company living in Sherman Oaks.

To date, the Sikh Women’s Association has awarded $150,000 to students of all backgrounds.

The association has also teamed up with Adventist Health and Kaiser Permanente to organize breast and cervical cancer screenings for Sikh women at a local gurudwaras. Brar wasn’t sure at first how many would show up given the taboo nature of what they were proposing to do.

“Well, they showed up, and you wouldn’t believe how many questions older grandmas had for us,” Brar said. “They were the least shy, and they wanted to talk about everything.”

One thing the association has been encouraging Sikhs to talk about lately is physical, sexual and substance abuse in their community. The association felt compelled to act after the intentional drowning of a newborn born to a 15-year-old Bakersfield Sikh girl in early 2019.

The teen’s mother admitted killing the baby out of shame; her father committed suicide, according to The Californian.

The Sikh Women’s Association organized a community discussion of abuse at the Guru Angad Darbar Sikh Gurdwara temple.

“I was shocked to my core that we were actually having this dialogue, which was so needed,” Brar said. “We talked about patriarchy and we talked about shame, which is so big in our community.”

When, a few months later, a Bakersfield Sikh man admitted fatally shooting his daughter-in-law for dishonoring his family, Brar and her friends started a crisis hotline that receives three to four calls per week.

“As you get more people, you have more things happen,” Gill said of the growing Sikh community in Bakersfield. “We want to be able to lend support where we can, and condemn things when they need to be condemned.”

Brar met her husband, Babu, when she was 18 and working in her father’s first Oildale gas station. She jokes that she’s grateful he’s not bothered by her “outgrowing, aggressive” ways.

On the contrary, Babu said: “She’s my rock star.”

The Brars were married in front of 1,100 people at the former Rio Bravo Resort in March 2001 and have three children: sons Davin, 15, and Dylan, 12; and daughter, Imanni , 12. Imanni was born to one of Raji’s cousins; the Brars’ adoption of her became final in May.