Period – End Of Sentence. (2nd position)

Earlier this year, I signed a petition titled “Period. End Of Sentence.” That’s when I knew that there is a movie on menstruation, with the same name. How ironical, it is, that movies are being made on something that we have no allowance to talk freely about. Period is a taboo, they still believe. People call it an “issue” and reverting back to one such statement, Parineeti Chopra, a renowned actress, while running a campaign on sanitary napkins, said “Period is not a problem, not having period is a problem.”

Well, coming back to the petition I signed - it said that a girl around a village in Andhra Pradesh thought that worms had entered her vagina after she had her first flow. We can, hence, figure out how little are people aware about the concept of menstruation. I mean I, myself, didn’t understand the point of bleeding every month until I read it in my textbook, because nobody cared to talk about it blatantly.

A girl bleeds for the first time and her mother asks her to put on a sanitary napkin, while simultaneously convincing her not to talk about it to anybody, especially men. My Biology teacher, back when she summoned all the girls from the school to educate us about periods, vividly, double checked for no male to be around while she conducted that meeting, as if we were planning to plant a bomb in the men’s washroom. Back then, I thought it actually was a stigma and that we were supposed to talk about it in whispers, if we actually decided to talk about it at all. In such a case, who must the young girls rely upon, thereafter, to access information about their own bodily phenomenon? This is when adolescents Google things and mess themselves up instead of confronting to the actual facts.

Many parts of our country, majorly the Southern states, celebrate a girl's menarche. She is considered a “grown up” when she bleeds for the first time. I mean she’s fertile now, so fair enough. She’s dressed up in a half sari; women from her family and neighbourhood gather around to sing and dance in order to rejoice her maturity. It is, basically, a ceremony. There’s nothing wrong in that custom when you’re 13 or 14, because girls do understand lot of the world by then, but some girls start their period at a tender age of 8. Would you claim that she’s mature? No, I think, not yet. A girl at that age is still a child. Burdening her with prejudices and responsibilities of the societal norms, already, would do nothing but tow away her good time. In many villages, girls are isolated during whatever days they menstruate because we, women, are “impure” during our period. The isolation, according to many beliefs, was a practice back then to let women rest and relax, because she suffers from pain and anxiety during her period. This belief has so devilishly been turned into a myth that commands like “Don’t enter the kitchen” and “Don’t step inside a Holy place” echo around a girl on her periods. (I can’t enter the kitchen but have to clean my room myself, even if I’m in pain? Only if someone could explain the logic to me!)

In contrast to Southern India, the Northern Indian states tend to get away with their girls’ periods like one gets away with a murder – on a tiptoe. No man in the family is supposed to notice your pubertal transformation. We, as a society, have shuffled our priorities and bifurcated “Dos” and “Don’ts” with complete ambiguity. Dos represent something acceptable, and Don’ts are unacceptable practices, according to the society. For instance, urinating in public comes under Dos while a leaking sanitary pad is enlisted under Don’ts. We follow these leads like blind birds let alone questioning them. We are so comfortable in whatever they have to command that we end up validating all the norms without

realising that we have been gifted with rationality to think about the set beliefs, and if necessary, to challenge them.

Menstrual hygiene is extremely important to avoid UTIs, but we tend to be indifferent towards it. Girls coy away from seeing a gynaecologist if an anomaly is detected, and even if they do visit the doctor, they tend not to open up about their problems. Everything starts from home, right? According to a source, 74% of women can’t get out of their houses once they start menstruating. How ignorant are we to overlook how women are deprived of their opportunities due to a silly shame. The irony is that it happens and is bound to happen every month, no matter how disgusted one is of the red clots. People don’t understand how periods are a blessing to us - it is a gift that the Almighty chose us to cherish.

What kind of space is this if a girl can’t understand what is going on with her own body and she despises it? Although situations are rolling over and people are opening up about menstruation, we still need to make amendments at personal levels. Talking to one’s siblings may help these changes to establish sooner - rather than making fun of a girl who he sees a stain of, he might help her. The mind is a powerful tool, with the only disadvantage of getting influenced in a blink. Use a positive influence and reach out to help and aware the little girls and mature women who need your guidance. Run campaigns and talk to the public and media unashamedly about it. Involve men and understand their take on menstruation. We sure have a huge section becoming sane and stable about the concept but we still have a long way to go. We will eradicate associating “taboo” with periods very soon, all we need is an initiative on our personal reach.