Bhojpuri star and MP Ravi Kishan has opened up about his traumatic childhood on Raj Shamani’s podcast, revealing that his father beat him regularly and that as a child, he welcomed it.”I used to love that my father was hitting me. I used to think that was love,” he said, explaining that since his father never expressed emotion through words or hugs, physical contact felt like the only connection between them. “When he used to hit me, I used to think that this was his way of communicating with me. At least he was in touch with me.”His father, a priest who took immense pride in his crest lock and sacred thread, wanted Ravi Kishan to become a farmer or get a government job. Acting was unthinkable. The day his son played Goddess Sita in a Ramleela, wearing a saree, he was furious. The beatings eventually reached a point where his mother handed him Rs 500 and told him to run. “He will kill you today,” she said.Thirty-three years later, when the success and the awards came, his father broke down. “Please forgive me. I misunderstood you,” he told his son. Ravi Kishan says he had nothing to forgive — that those lessons, however brutal, were ones he later passed on to his own children in his own way.