My name is Navya. I'm a middle-class girl, raised in a modest home with my grandmother, father, mother, and two elder sisters.
When I was just five years old, I used to go to school every day with my younger sister. One day, I sat quietly in her classroom, and the teachers scolded her.
"You shouldn't bring your little sister to school," they said.
My sister came home crying.
"Navya, don't come to school with me. The teachers are scolding me because of you," she told me.
That was the first time I cried not for myself - but because someone I loved was hurting. From that moment, something changed in me.
Unable to bear my pain, my father admitted me into 1st grade even though I was only five. I started doing well - always first in my class. But even then, I preferred staying home and playing more than going to school.
One day, I stayed back with a friend and sat on the staircase at home, happily playing. My father returned unexpectedly for lunch. Somehow, he found out I hadn't gone to school.
He didn't say a word. He went out, brought back a plastic pipe, and hit me hard. My mother and grandmother tried to stop him, but he didn't listen.
Later, quietly, he came to me with oil in his hands. He gently applied it on my bruises, softly rubbing my back - like nothing else mattered more than my pain.
That day, I understood:
He didn't hit me because he hated me. He did it because he loved me - deeply, fiercely, like only a parent can.
I never forgot that day. It stayed with me - not as a scar, but as the moment I began to understand love, pain, and sacrifice.