After enjoying all the glitter and uninterrupted media focus for days since the Oscars evening at Beverly Hills, Pinki, the star of short documentary "Smile Pinki", which bagged the world's most prestigious cinema award, finally got her good night's sleep in her mother's lap.

A completely exhausted Pinki reached her home in Rampur-Dabhai village, about 70 km off the district headquarters of Mirzapur in the south eastern corner of Uttar Pradesh, late Saturday night and jumped straight into her anxiously awaiting mother's arms.

"She dozed off in no time and has got up only around noon today (Sunday)," her mother Shimla Devi told. "Even the puja we performed last night was held while she was fast asleep in my lap."

"I cannot deny that what our little girl has given us cannot match anything else for us in this world - we are completely overwhelmed. But now that Pinki is back home, she will have to grapple with harsh realities once again," the mother remarked, while looking at her humble thatched dwelling in this dusty village.

And these realities were not limited to the family going without four square meals, but also battling for next day's subsistence, even as little Pinki is dreaming of her new home that the government has promised.

"Yes, I am looking forward to sleeping in our new home with a cemented roof on top," she told reporters.

Even though no local official cared to pay a visit to Pinki's village, which the government declared as "adopted", Pinki was surely impressed by the thousands of people who waited along the highway to usher her into her native village.

And sure enough, she is an optimist. "I am sure, we will not have to stay in this hut for long," she said, while recalling all the dazzle that she witnessed thousands of kilometers away in Hollywood.

The 10-year-old girl, who shot into the spotlight after a successful surgery on her cleft lip by Varanasi based plastic surgeon Subodh Singh, is also all set to return to her village school where she is enrolled in Class 5.

"My ambition is to become a doctor," she said with a twinkle in her eyes.

But both mother Shimla Devi and daily-wager labourer father Rajendra Sonkar were keeping their fingers crossed. "We do not even have enough to feed our five children," lamented the father.

But the mother does not mean to understate the glory that the daughter has brought them.

"The fame that my child has got for this entire village cannot be quantified and she has really done us all proud," she said, while hastily adding: "So what if all this does not bring any money - that I must confess - we need badly."