Girish Chandra was born in Balrampur, Uttar Pradesh, India, to a family living in relative poverty. He won a scholarship to study medicine at King George's Medical College in Lucknow. He got into ophthalmology in his fourth year of medicine and during one medical camp he performed 160 cataract operations in two days. At the age of 29 he was appointed Ophthalmological Registrar in Nottingham and arrived in London with just £1 10 shillings. He worked in Belfast in the early 1970s, where he made friendships in a divided community. At the age of 32, he moved to Winnipeg, Canada and became a lecturer at McGill University in Montreal. In 1976, he opened an ophthalmology practice in the state of Vermont, USA. After personal tragedies, he and his young family returned to London, where he worked at Charing Cross Hospital.