Pinky Haryan’s childhood was filled with poverty and hardship. She used to beg on the streets with her parents and scavenge for food in the garbage dumps of McLeod Ganj. However, today she has transformed her life and is now a doctor, working hard to clear an exam that will allow her to practice medicine in India.
Pinky’s life took a dramatic turn in 2004 when she caught the attention of Lobsang Jamyang, a Tibetan refugee monk and director of a charitable trust in Dharamshala. Seeing Pinky begging, Jamyang visited the slum where she lived and encouraged her father, Kashmiri Lal, to prioritize her education. This led to Pinky’s enrollment in Dayanand Public School in Dharamshala, and she became part of the first batch of students housed in a hostel established by the charitable trust for homeless children.
Ajay Srivastava, president of the Umang Foundation and closely associated with Jamyang for the past 19 years, shared with NDTV that Pinky initially missed her home and parents, but she quickly focused on her studies, realizing that education was her path out of poverty.
Pinky successfully passed her Senior Secondary exams and cleared the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET). However, high fees barred her from entering private medical colleges. With support from the UK-based Tong-Len Charitable Trust, she secured admission to a medical college in China in 2018. Recently, she returned to Dharamshala after completing her MBBS degree.
After 20 years of determination and hard work, Pinky is now a qualified doctor, ready to serve the underprivileged and offer them a better life. Speaking with PTI, she reflected, “Poverty was the biggest struggle in my childhood. It was painful to see my family in such distress. Once I entered school, I was driven by the ambition to succeed in life. Growing up in a slum was my greatest motivation to pursue a stable and prosperous future.”
Pinky shared that at the age of four, during her school interview, she expressed her ambition to become a doctor. “At that time, I didn’t know exactly what a doctor did, but I always wanted to help my community.” Now, after returning from China, she is preparing for the Foreign Medical Graduate Examination (FMGE) to qualify for practicing medicine in India.