It’s 1992 in a fictitious village in Maharashtra, but attitudes date back to about a century ago. Although the residents of Vesaicha Vadgaon worship the goddess Vesai, they carry out ungodly acts in her name.

Girls who attain puberty are immediately yanked out of school and married, often to men much older than them. The ones who rebel are publicly humiliated, their families ostracised.

Vesai is regarded as the fearsome protector of the village’s prosperity and honour. Why then does this goddess, in whose temple only virgin girls can pray, test her young devotees? That’s the question faced by Ahilya, her mother Lakshmi and her father Aaba (Siddhesh Dhuri).

The brightest student at her school, the teenaged Ahilya (Sajiri Joshi) wants to be a doctor. Since she’s betrothed to the barely educated but hugely ambitious aspiring politician Jaysing (Shivraj Waichal), Ahilya is expected to announce the start of her menstrual cycle, duck her head in modesty and submit to tradition.

But she doesn’t. Keen on studying further, Ahilya manages to fool Lakshmi (Kshitee Jog) for a while. The deception plays out for long enough to get a measure of the mother-daughter bond, which is also one of the most memorable aspects of the ZEE5 series Baai Tujhyapaayi.

The Marathi...

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