The question is, from what? Her family. She was hiding from her large, noisy, nosy family. Sunitha was 9. She had four older siblings.

Rakesh, aged 13, Nikita, aged 15, Sourav, aged 19, and Rahul, aged 21. She lived with her parents, her siblings, her aunts, her uncles, her cousins, and her grandparents.

She was hiding because in the Maths test on Friday, she had got 3 marks out of 10 and her whole family, all 18 of them would ask what had happened to her. You see, Sunitha usually got full marks in her subjects. She was known to be the most studious girl in the entire household (now, that's saying something because there are 18 people in the household!). So now, it was practically impossible to stride into the living room where everyone was, and say, “Ah, yes, I got 3 out of 10 in Maths” without bursting into tears.

Sunitha got through the rest of the day without having to go down, but around dinnertime, she knew that someone would come and call her from this room of hers.

But no one came. She could hear them eating dinner and talking about the day. Saturday night dinner's were always a great feast for the family. Though it meant more work for all the people in the kitchen, who were already toiling hard enough to cater to 18 different people's food preferences and dislikes 7 days a week, 3 meals a day.

She could hear Rahul talking about his day at the bank, and she could hear Nikita complaining that nobody likes her new haircut, and she could hear the people who were getting up in a rush so that they could watch their 9 ‘o’ clock ‘Baa Bahu Aur Beti’ (or some rubbish like that) serial, and she could hear her mother asking everybody whether they wanted more food or not…

Before she knew it, she was racing down the stairs, she tripped, she fell, she didn't care, all that mattered was that she had to tell her family about the test, she could keep it no longer inside her, her lip was bleeding- but she managed to tell them “I got 3 out of 10 in the Maths test yesterday!” She felt better, even after hearing their disbelieving gasps… even though she was crying… she had escaped her fear!