The farthest I'd ever travelled was the taluka market, until the bus carried me to the city. Every festival I go back and the fields look smaller but dearer. The city quietly teaches you that your village was never small at all.

I failed my first-semester maths paper and cried inside an STD booth so nobody in the hostel would see. Then I remembered my father never once failed to wake at 4am for the field, whatever the harvest. So I sat with the book again. Reappear cleared.

Back in the village nobody could explain the physics, so I taught myself by mobile torch after the load-shedding. When city classmates complain their coaching is far, I stay quiet — I'd have walked ten kilometres for what they already have.

Hostel mess dal will never beat my aai's, but I've learnt to eat it with my eyes closed and my heart at home. Sharing one bathroom with forty boys has taught me a patience my exams never could.

First person in my family to reach college — I still remember stepping off the ST bus in Amravati with one steel trunk and my mother's pickle. My father grows cotton; I'm trying to grow into someone who makes him proud. Hello, everyone.