Written by, July 1 -- Prachi Sharma

I was born and raised among the hills of Arunachal Pradesh, in the small town of Lumla-and whatever I have become, it began there.

My father, Satya Prakash Sharma, came from a modest village and devoted his working life to Arunachal as a senior government teacher in a remote corner of the state, where good teachers are everything. Later, after we children had grown up, my mother, Manju Sharma, also taught there. Ours was a home of educators-and so, naturally, a home of books. They were never just objects on a shelf; they were how our family understood the world and how we passed ourselves on.

The schools of Arunachal shaped me in ways I still carry with me. I studied hard in those classrooms, and I w...