Jasmine opens with the protagonist recalling an incident that occurred to her when she was a seven-year-old girl in the village of Hasnapur, India. An astrologer tells Jasmine her future—she will be widowed and exiled.

Angrily, the little girl calls the prophet a liar, and in response, he strikes her on the head, causing her to fall to the ground. Jasmine bites her tongue, and a twig from the bundle of firewood she was carrying strikes her forehead, leaving a star-shaped cut.

Aloud, Jasmine again denies the astrologer’s prediction, but in her heart, she feels fated and doomed. The astrologer tells her to find her sisters, and Jasmine, a bundle of wood in her arms, heads to the river bend where her sisters fuss over the cut on her head. They declare that her scarred face means she will not be able to find a man to marry when she grows up.

Defensively, Jasmine claims that the mark is her third eye, the weapon of wise sages and witches. As her sisters run up the riverbank, Jasmine swims in the river, seething with anger. She suddenly touches the bloated, sunken corpse of a dog, whose body tears in two.