For Muskan, the pandemic did not arrive as a news story. It arrived as her father losing his job.

School fees became impossible, and Muskan moved from her private school to a government one. Her father took on whatever work he could find; her mother began giving tuition classes at home. Between them they held one line absolutely: whatever else had to change, their children's education would not stop. That decision cost them things they never mentioned to Muskan at the time.

By class 11, Muskan was carrying a different kind of difficulty. She wanted to become an engineer, but she had no idea how a person actually got there. Her classmates with means were in private coaching. She had no one in her family or her circle who had walked the path, no one to tell her what to study, in what order, against what standard. The ambition was intact; the map was missing.

Then one of her school teachers mentioned Avanti Fellows — a test preparation programme that cost nothing. Muskan's father told her to apply. She sat the entrance test, and she got in.

What arrived with the acceptance was, first of all, structure: comprehensive test preparation, classes where she could bring her doubts and have them dismantled properly, and mentors who knew what the exam demanded. Just as importantly, it arrived with people who expected her to do well. For a student who had spent a year unsure whether her goal was even reachable, being held to a standard was its own kind of encouragement.

Muskan went on to perform strongly in JEE Main and secure a seat in engineering. Her result also earned her a scholarship through Avanti Fellows — which meant the fees her parents had been braced for, and the education loan they had assumed was coming, did not materialise. After years of her family absorbing every shock so that she could keep studying, Muskan was able to hand something back.

She is clear-eyed about what she owes and to whom. Once she is working, she intends to support her parents — and she talks, specifically, about taking them shopping. About buying them the things they went without for years, without ever making her feel the cost of it.