She was returning home from a painful cramp-filled day at school and had to make a quick pit stop at the chemist. As she paid for her sanitary napkins, the cashier wrapped her package in newspaper and then concealed it in a black polythene. The 13 year old couldn’t help but wonder why the other shoppers at the chemist left without their goods being concealed and hidden away in a black polythene bag. Was getting her period a crime? Did she do something wrong?
She went home that day full of different thoughts, the underlying feeling being embarrassment. As she reached home with the forbidden black package, her mother shunned her from the kitchen and told her she was ‘unholy’. Belittled, she went to her room and came out later for the evening puja, once again she was forbidden from stepping foot in the mandir. She kept thinking, what was so wrong with her period that she was being treated differently?
This is just a description of a regular day in most Indian girls lives on their periods, when they are shunned and made to feel embarrassed about a thing that is so natural. Period blood is the only blood that doesn’t stem from a place of violence, yet the only blood that triggers this differential treatment.
I fail to understand how we live in a country where women choosing not to give birth is a concept that society finds hard to grasp, but the very process that enables birth is something to be ashamed of. I want to grow up in a world where menstruation is no longer a taboo, a world where we applaud our women for the pain they endure, a world where no girl ever has to sacrifice on her menstrual health.
And as Tupac once wisely said,
“And since we all came from a woman
Got our name from a woman and our game from a woman
I wonder why we take from our women”.
