Flashback:
Tarini was very clever and intelligent since childhood. The study was the matter of life and death for her. She was a favorite student of many teachers. She would easily solve third std math problems in the second std. She received a lot of love from everyone at school. However, few teachers, as well as students and their parents, were feeling secretly jealous of her. Sometimes jealousy could show on their face.
Especially the town in which Tarini was living with her family was so small that most of the families knew each other. Tarini's family was a middle-class family. Her father had a small hardware business in the town's market and her mother was a housewife. The shop was ancestral. Their home was also ancestral.
Tarini was very kind, compassionate, selfless and sensitive. She would put others first than herself. If her friends forgot to do homework, she would help them. She would give her notebooks to her friends, but some would deliberately forget her notebook at home.
Teachers used to punish Tarini, but she never got angry with her classmates for forgetting her notebook because she thought they genuinely had forgotten. Also, she never stopped helping them.
She was a favorite student of her math teacher. She got more than 90% marks always. Not only did she use to help her classmates but also her 2-year-old younger sister Mohini who was not that clever like Tarini but would get marks in the range of 60 to 70%. But again, most of the credit for Mohini's academic progress was because of Tarini.
Tarini was so caring to Mohini as her elder sister that Mohini didn't remember a single instance of any quarrel between them.
She would give her toys and other things to Mohini quickly. Mohini not only respected Tarini but adored her.
Tarini got 95% marks in her SSC board exams. She became famous overnight. News articles were published about her. Radio and TV journalists were taking her interviews. In those interviews, she revealed that she wanted to become a gynecologist and do something for underprivileged women in the country and improve the overall health of women while they were pregnant so that they further can give birth to healthy children.
She also wanted to actively do something for stopping the female feticide in society. At such a young age, such a great maturity is rare which was present in Tarini.
After completing her 12th, she was planning for medical studies but there was no medical college in her town.
Days passed.
Now Tarini was studying in her town in her junior college in 12th where she had chosen the biology stream. She did not know where the huge amount of money for her upcoming medical education would come from, but she was trying to get an education loan and some scholarships.
She also worked part-time to earn money to help her parents. Her mother, father and sister were feeling very proud of her.
While she was studying in junior college, Tarini's grandparents had died in an accident that occurred while they were on a tour on a bus with their peers. That incident changed her life a lot. This had a profound effect on her mind.
She was disturbed for many days after the incident. The ephemerality and uncertainty of human life made her uneasy. Later slowly she concentrated back on her studies.
A few of her school classmates were also studying with her in the same junior college. Some of them were jealous of her. Not only students but also a group of professors were part of this jealousy brigade.
That group always detested Tarini and everything else and everyone else that supported Tarini.
Tarini's supporter group believed Tarini would come first in 12th std in the HSC board at the state level while another group wanted one of the professor's sons Shirish to come first.
This later turned into a serious political and mind game.
Few fellow students of Tarini started connecting her name with Sumedh.
Sumedh purposely started going to Tarini pretending to ask for her help in her studies. She began to help him freely. She spent a lot of time in the library with him just to help him.
Gradually, Shirish started spreading rumours about Sumedh and Tarini's affair. Students started gossiping. Sumedh started talking to his friends in such a way that these rumours would spread further.
When Tarini asked Sumedh about all the rumours, he told her not to pay attention to what people were saying.
Shirish was the mastermind of all this and his father indirectly supported him in this matter. Shirish's father was affiliated with a political party and he wanted to become whole and sole of this college very soon.
As a first step towards it, he wanted his son to attain the first rank in the state.
The child's marks could have been raised using his political influence by pressurizing the educational board, but that would have raised suspicions as Tarini was so brilliant that even if Shirish had come first, no one would have believed him.
Then a plan was devised to distract Tarini from her studies.
One day, Sumedh and Tarini were studying in the library till late evening, there was no one in the library that day except both.
Only the librarian was sitting in a corner and busy reading something.
Suddenly Sumedh started moving his face near to hers and started kissing her.
She was very surprised by such a sudden and unexpected move of Sumedh but as she was also a young girl, she somehow liked the feeling and slowly she also responded to his kiss.
And then three professors including Shirish's father and Shirish came into the library pretending to collect fee books. Tarini and Sumedh stopped kissing when they spotted the professors and felt ashamed.
The professor's group rebuked them like never before.
The plan was successful.
Sumedh said sorry to Tarini privately later. He said he was deluded and couldn't stop his youthful feelings. Tarini believed that it happened to him by mistake.
Later, a purposeful and cleverly planned defamation of Tarini was started by the venomous group.
Comments were being written overnight on college trees and walls and verandas mentioning the affair and kiss exchange in the library between Tarini and Sumedh in a very obscene way.
Sumedh had stopped meeting her after this incident. Tarini took a lot of tension because of all this. It started affecting her studies adversely.
