Finally, an award for taking care of forsaken wards

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, January 28

Running a home for abandoned girls in the city, Parkash Kaur is all set to become one of the recipients of the Padma Shri awards to be conferred by the government later this year. Her social work towards running ‘Unique Home’, a centre where she is taking care of 80 orphan, unwanted and unclaimed girls at Nakodar road here for the past 27 years, has finally been recognised.

Parkash, who is the lifetime managing trustee of the Bhai Ghanaiya Charitable Trust running the centre, says she herself was dealt the wrong hand by her parents and knows the pain that each of the 80 girls were going through. She was brought up at Nari Niketan in the city. As the girls lovingly call her mother, she takes them for excursions to hill stations. Known to provide them best dresses, she takes them to top-end shopping malls and has enrolled the girls in the best of private schools and professional colleges for their studies. She even celebrates their birthdays together every year on April 24 and has married off 15 girls, all raised at her centre.

Owing to the goodwill earned by her, ‘Unique Home’ has been getting good donations. Canadian minister Harjit S Sajjan and business tycoon Neeta Ambani have been some of the prominent figures to have visited. Parkash says, “The award makes me realise that I need to work even more hard towards my goal. My real award will be when no parent will shun his daughter and leave them to die on roads.”