Here’s the picture I thought I was taking. My three beautiful girls: Moy Moy, her cousin Nisha and their friend Naina. They were returning home from Latika Vihar and I had come, camera in hand, to meet them halfway.

I took their photo for the joy of it, for their youth and their loveliness and for the sight of the three of them walking down the quiet, tree-lined street.

But photography is a funny thing. The camera is only as smart as the user. It sees what you see, of course, but it also sees much that you don’t. And unless you consciously compose your shot so that you and the camera are seeing the exact same thing, the final results can be surprising.

So that’s the picture I thought I was taking.

Here’s the one I actually took:

I never even noticed the child on the bicycle. It wasn’t until I got home and uploaded the photo that I realized she was there. And that was odd because she is a child I know well and have written about often (here, and here, for example). I think about Gia a lot and I have been intimately involved with her family. I was surprised at myself.

I explained it by saying I’d had eyes only for my own girls, but something about that reasoning wasn’t quite right. My eyes kept going back to Gia. There was something strange about her face. That was it. I hadn’t recognized her.

Her face was swollen on one side almost beyond recognition. You can’t see it here, but that evening, staring at her picture on my laptop, almost against my will, I forced myself to zoom in on her. Though out of focus, it was clear what had happened. My stomach heaved and twisted as I acknowledged the fact that Gia had been beaten.

The next day, I went to her home. The swelling had reduced, but her eye was still half-shut and the bruises had begun to form across her cheek. She was her usual cheerful self. When I asked what had happened, she changed the subject. Her mother finally said, in a flat, declarative tone, that she had hit her. No apologies, no embarrassment. Gia hadn’t done her homework, she said.

Much of what can only be called child abuse in India isn’t like child abuse in the United States. Most of the time, it isn’t random or unpredictable here, visited upon an unsuspecting child for anything or nothing. In America, it is often done out of misplaced rage – a child who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, a hungry baby who won’t stop crying. The mother’s drunken boyfriend loses his temper; the mother herself, sleep-deprived or depressed, lashes out at her children for being children. And even though state care is almost always a disaster, one usually feels an abused child will be better off out of the home where it is happening.

Here in India, it’s not so clear. For one thing, state care doesn’t really exist as an option. Whom could I call to report Gia’s mother? And would I want to? If there is one thing everyone is crystal clear about, it is that Gia’s mother is crazy in love with her. She would do anything for her child.

She beats her because she won’t study, because school is what is going to change the story for her and because it’s her duty as a mother to ensure that Gia gets a good education. She beats her because she loves her.

I know so many mothers like Gia’s. Some of them are friends of mine; some of them are relatives. They all say that’s how they were brought up and – look! – they turned out fine. They all say that they know their parents did it for their own good and that’s why they are doing it to their own children.

My own belief is that their parents didn’t understand how to bring up children and neither do they. They expect kids to behave in ways kids are not capable of behaving (Sit still! Be quiet! Sit and memorize these tables! Write these sentences out 100 times in perfect penmanship!) and then they abuse them when they fail. They have never seen anything different.

We ignore the fact of child abuse because it seems too overwhelming and too omnipresent to ever do anything about. Like my photograph, it’s right there in plain sight, but we avert our eyes and concentrate on other things.

Bringing up a child is an awesome, amazing responsibility and gift. It takes skill and passion and a belief in the child’s integrity. It requires respect for the dignity of that child’s soul, for that child’s right to be who she is.

Each and every one of them is precious. That knowledge is there in every parent. But they need the skill. They need the understanding. We have to work on this. We have to help parents learn to respect their children. There they are at the gate. Our present. Our future.  Our life, our sweetness and our hope.