Shraddha Tiwari is like many other 16-year-olds in rural Uttar Pradesh -- studying in Class 12 at a government school, living with her parents and siblings in a small town, where her father is a farmer and her mother a homemaker.

But there’s one thing that sets her apart. While most of her peers are quietly navigating adolescence, Shraddha is fearlessly leading conversations around menstruation.

She comes from a community where the “don’ts” pile up when it comes to periods -- no temples, no pickles, no washing hair. There’s a long line of restrictions that paint menstruation as a curse, not a natural process.

The high school student, studying science with biology, has four sisters and one brother. But her Sultanpur home wasn’t always open to such talks, despite the fact that it had five young ladies growing in it.

“It was always something you should not speak about. When I got my first period during a math class, my mother later gave me a piece of cloth and told me to stay silent about it,” she shares.

That moment -- marked by confusion, fear, and shame -- would later become her reason to speak up. “I didn’t understand why such a natural process had to be kept a secret,” she says.