Despite being raised away from the Motherland, my melodramatic Mother Superior and my fatalist Father made sure that we didn’t miss anything Indian.  We belonged to the indispensable community of expatriates in the Gulf, the Gulf Malayalis (yup, us Mexicans of the Middle East). Like most middle-class South Indian households, my mother wore the pants while my father flaunted his masculinity in a lungi, so I grew up looking up to my mother a lot, simply because she was the one who was up and about a lot.

Everything was hale and hearty until the day my uterine vessels hemorrhaged or in simple colloquial English, ‘I was down’, for the first time! I still remember the dark brown stain and the stench that it left on my panties. I had just returned from school, I was appalled and when my Supermom came running to the toilet alarmed by my shrieks, she was so overwhelmed that she told me, [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=”null”]“You are only twelve years old, don’t tell anyone!”[/inlinetweet]

Being the first-born and hence my mother’s best friend, it was my dharma to listen to the woman who gave birth to me and most importantly because she often kept reminding me of that! She was a woman brought up in a different India and although I can totally understand the origin of her many notions, it doesn’t belittle their baselessness. I still nurse a grudge against my mother for not teaching me to embrace the event while I got embarrassed about it instead. I couldn’t even share this awesome physical milestone (the most precious in a girl’s life), with my gang of girls because of my loyalty to my mother’s notions of it being too shameful to disclose! I went to school with this secret carefully under wraps for a whole year, until things changed after one fine Physical Training (PT) class in 2003.

It is not in  the nature of truth to remain hidden forever as we well know. During the  PT period in the summer of 2003, while I was frolicking with my gang of girls, my menstrual cycle behaved erratically and a blood drop stained my pinafore. A friend spotted the stain, she told the gang about it and then the entire gang told me. I was dumbfounded and actually, I was more confused about whether I should act surprised or act bewildered. I decided to go for the apparently surprised expression. I used to do a lot of school plays back then and hence my pretense was credible and convincing enough. My friends accompanied me to the staff room and a sanitary napkin was handed to me by a sympathetic teacher to deal with the emergency situation.

I cursed the unpredictability of my menstrual cycle that day. The commotion  a drop of blood had created amongst my girl friends in the class was lovely to participate in though.The discussion that ensued lasted for the next forty minutes or so, where everything from brands to flows were exhaustively discussed.

My cherished memory of that day at school was an incredible feeling of lightness! Like, really light; it was like ‘coming out of the closet’ kind of light…like the heavy shroud of secrecy had finally been lifted away from my nimble punk self!

One of my teachers even called up my mother and informed her of the coming-of-age event. My  mother had it easier because she could act phoney over the phone. I came to know she acted (phoney) surprised and (phoney) happy! So much for her secrecy!

Amongst Malayalis, when girls attain menarche, people usually create a huge hue and cry about it. I mean, why? Just for a day, there is this tradition of family friends and relatives giving gifts, which are expected to be returned when the daughter of the person who gifted it also bleeds. If the gifter didn’t bear a daughter, then they were simply ignored.

The superficiality attached to this mindless tradition is what irks me the most. The very same menstruating female is treated like she has contracted some communicable disease, when she is ‘down’ the next month and onwards. My mother would prevent me from touching her or her fresh laundry whenever I had my periods. I was also restricted and had to stay a safe ten meters away from the idols she worshipped, lest my menstrual self contaminate the assumed divinity of those idols. A menstruating female is like this mass of filth, you know. Whatever she touches is contaminated! She is so diabolic; her advances can even weaken religious representatives of God!

Firstly, those are some very bad graphics right there.

Secondly, menstruating women do not assume superpowers for a week! If that was the case, a menstruating Wonder Woman would have been quite a sight to behold!

Mothers, grandmothers, aunts and several prominent female voices in our lives have undeniably played a role in allowing such taboos to thrive. My mother used the bogus statement “God, will punish you” every single time I revolted by playing it normal during my periods. Eventually, I drifted away from the religion that encouraged so much disparity against the cause of women. From whatever bits and pieces I know about God and the Universe, I am pretty much convinced that the fear of God has become a last straw that people use to exercise power and to keep the herd mentality alive and intact.

If you want to be disappointed in life, refuse to embrace change. Although the first people who hailed periods as a taboo issue are largely unknown, menstrual taboos are still alive and kicking because a lot of women out there are absolutely fine with the way things are! This is the very same attitude that has encouraged sexual harassment, wage inequality and gender inequality at large.

It is hard to comprehend which part of periods are actually unholy.

Is it the blood? Or the chunks of uterine shedding? Or is it the part our bodies that make people uncomfortable?

In that case, every person who squirts,ejaculates,vomits,coughs,sneezes, defecates and urinates are all untouchables, right?

This omnipresent God is highly unlikely to have any interest in putting to task any and every female who wants to live her life as normally as possible, even on the days when she is bleeding. Personally, it was hard to stick to a religion that had practices that made no sense for its menstruating followers. Morality is man-made, the universe does not judge! Every time an event or trait is associated with the majority or with a dominant entity, then it gets celebrated and perpetuated. If menstruation was a thing that men exclusively did, it would have been a totally different ball game.

Bodily functions like breathing, sweating, defecating,urinating,coughing, vomiting and farting are not really acts that would invite the wrath of the Alpha or the Omega or the Amma! But masturbation and menstruation still haven’t come out of the closet to enjoy the status of normalcy, or the status of being human.

We can change these attitudes though and let’s begin with us, the millennials – let’s refuse to talk about it in hushed tones. Menstruation is one of the most nonviolent of acts that involves blood! So just relax and let’s talk about being ‘down’ openly and fearlessly!

Ardra-KrishnaAuthor:  Aardhra Krishna

Aardhra  spent 15 years clueless and in denial of her true self. The designer and architect of many a castle in the air, she ditched dentistry to become a writer in 2015. Her vision is to create a world where the grass doesn’t appear greener on the other side.

Editor: Divya Rosaline

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