It was a regular day at school and there I was doing regular
things. Attending classes, chit-chatting, copying notes and yes, waiting
eagerly for the day to end. Innovation was always something that my school
sorely lacked in. I always felt that the teaching was delivered in a
top-to-down manner and that the focus was on earning marks instead of
developing capacities. As a seventh standard student, I was curious, scared,
and mostly confused about my changing body and the spectrum of emotions I was
dealing with. In my circle of girl-friends, we would often discuss why the boys
in our school suddenly developed strange heavy tones in their voices, why our
bodies had suddenly started growing in weird regions in addition to a variety
of other such questions which kept popping up in conversations day in and
day out. To our dismay, we never had anyone around to discuss all this with. As
the days passed, our anxieties and curiosity kept on increasing with no answers
in sight.
Well, so it was a regular hot day at school and it was that time
of the day when all we could think about was when we would be left out of the
gates that looked like prison bars to me (because I have never been a fan of
school and studying). That was when someone entered the class and an
announcement was made. “All the girls have to report to the basement in
classroom Z,” said a teacher. While we girls wondered what had just happened,
the boys I remember were curious to know why they were not a party to all of
this. There we were then, almost half the population of the class, getting up
and going down to the basement with clueless expressions on our faces and
excitement in our minds for we had just got released from the boring
Mathematics class that was taking place.
From the third floor, as we walked down slowly to the basement,
many speculations about what was going to happen were made; injections, health
check-ups, random gifts and such were some of them. I remember very clearly
that one girl declared that we were going to be spoken about something called periods.
The word was definitely not new to me. Well, school periods were something we
always knew about but then she went on to explain about a new concept called
‘Menstrual Periods’. I began walking down the stairs wondering what
menstruation was all about. The very first day I had heard about it was the day
when several of my questions were left unanswered.
As we entered the dingy room in one corner of the lobby, I saw
the room packed with girls. On one corner was a small television set and we all
sat down as spectators in front of it. “A movie…ahh…not bad,” I thought to
myself. The heat started getting to my head as a straight-faced lady entered
the room and we were made to hush our voices down to sit and silently listen as
usual.
A ten-minute long movie showing us how to use a sanitary napkin
added more confusion to my ever-dramatic mind. I sat there wondering about whys
and whats and whose and whens. My friend, the one who had already got her
periods re-assuredly patted my back and promised to tell me all about it. For
me, the idea of bleeding every month without any reason sounded crazy. “This is
how it happens” was replaced by “It happens! Deal with it!”
The next moment, I saw myself walking back to the classroom with
a sanitary napkin provided to us as a return gift to carry back. The ‘Angels of
Menstruation’ had just informed us about ‘that time of the month’. I felt like
I was thrown into a pool with a life jacket but in no way trained to know how
to use it, why to use it and why indeed we needed to do so. With no training,
with no reason, with no knowledge about why the changes were taking places, I
found questions popping up in my head but was too scared to get the words out
of my mouth.
We tried to hide it in our blazers and some hid it by folding it
in our hands because we knew that the very moment we returned to the class,
there would be faces looking at us with questioning eyes, curious to know what
it was that made us so special that only we were invited for. It is one of the
funniest yet weirdest memories of my school days to be questioned by the boys
around me, with my school bag among many others being rummaged to find out what
was gifted to us. We had no answers; we didn’t know how to tell the boys and
indeed if we could in fact tell them anything at all.
Over the years, the memory keeps on coming and going from time
to time. When I had my periods, I was unsure and scared about everything and
the way in which it all took place. From that friend-who-had-it-first to
sometimes the-elder-sister figure, I turned to everyone for answers but the
very idea that it was supposedly dirty and that it wasn’t considered normal to
talk about it made my curious brain forcefully shut down, leaving most of my
questions unanswered.
My mother never encouraged me to talk about it. We were told
that we were not supposed to make it obvious when it was ‘that time of the
month’. We were told to hide our painful cramps and to deal with our mood
swings. “Have tea, and keep quiet,” my mother would say. Well my mouth was shut
but in my mind, the conditioning took place in such a way that I grew up
thinking that periods were strictly not to be spoken about and that it was a
shame that we had to go through it in the first place.
Years passed by and one fine day when I found myself sitting
with a group of adolescent girls in a slum in Delhi with their curious eyes
staring back at me, I realized how I would have looked at that time. I left
myself at the disposal of those girls, ready to answer any question, any issue,
anything at all. I started narrating my story and told them of how, over the
years, I had gone through a phase of not knowing to knowing it all. Internet,
movies, discussions, research and other avenues of information had all helped
me but I knew the challenges I had faced in my struggle to reach the point
where I knew that periods were not ‘dirty’, it wasn’t something we had to hide
or ignore and that it was a natural process which we most certainly were
blessed to go through. For me, the lack of a mentor to help me understand this
process got me to realize how I could be one for many others. That is how I
found myself answering absolutely anything that the girls ever wanted to know
about menstruation.
We live in a society where we consider women impure during their
periods. You cannot go to a temple, touch pickles or enter kitchens. We study
and function in such societal structures where life processes are taught as
mere subjects and not as something crucial to growing up. Sex Education is
good, but the manner in which it is delivered needs to be restructured. We live
in homes where even the act of throwing a sanitary napkin is to be done with a
certain amount of care and secrecy. Well, if change have to take place, it has
to start with us. I started with my younger sister, with many other boys and
girls in my house and went on to address the dilemmas of many young minds at
various other places. You have to decide where to start. Act now, or else
ignorance will only result in curious brains shutting down and in creative minds
clamping up.
