#Menstruation
/ˌmen.struˈeɪ.ʃən/
noun
The process in a woman’s body, of discharging blood and other material from the lining of the uterus at intervals of about one lunar month from puberty until menopause, except during pregnancy.

Being a woman and going through regular and irregular menstrual cycles for almost nine years now, it has irritated the lights out of me every single time, to be told to talk about it in a certain code language which is shared by the ‘women’s community’ in our household, of which the ‘men’ are aware, but choose to ignore. How convenient! The result of this was that if I was ever left alone with a male adult during my periods, I couldn’t and wouldn’t dare to tell them about how much it hurt and where.

This was the same at school and I couldn’t believe that girls my age would be so conditioned as to not discuss it openly with their male peers about why they were absent for four consecutive days and needless to say, this demotivated me from talking about it as well.

In college, things changed. I started talking a lot more about it. This was primarily resisted by my family members, but they finally eased into talking about it as something that was natural, biological and universal.

Another huge realization hit me when I was pursuing my undergraduate degree in Psychology.

So, two years ago, my final year research focused on the Emotional Quotient and Self–Esteem concerns in young girls, based on their menarcheal age (during the first occurrence of their periods) between the ages of ten to fifteen years.

While going through the sample papers, I recalled some of the challenges of this process:

1. Getting permission from schools and parents to talk about the topic.

2. Getting girls to accept whether or not they were menstruating. (Some got it way too early and some were late. In all cases, it was apparently embarrassing.)

3. If anyone knows how difficult it is to work with coding and segregation, they would understand the feeling I got when after filling up the questionnaires from those giggling girls and telling them that their identity would not be disclosed, one of them stands up to tell me that she was actually very ashamed and sat down with the lot of those girls who had not yet gotten their periods.

4. Reading those papers afterwards and understanding contradictions in statements like, “My mother is my best friend” and “I cannot touch her during those days…” and those on the lines of: [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=”null”]“I have stopped wearing sleeveless frocks,” “I don’t play with the boys in my society,” [/inlinetweet]“My friends don’t know that I get periods,” etc.

I got an A grade on that research paper, but it really did not mean anything until now when one of my very close relatives, who has two very beautiful daughters, came to live with us for a few days. One of them is closing in on her pre-teens and one day, pointing out to a row of stacked sanitary pads in a store, asked me why I was purchasing something that was meant for the likes of her baby sister.
I realised that even after all of this, I had no knowledge of how to answer such questions without lying and veiling and being secretive about it. Somehow, I tried explaining to the little brain of a primary school go-er, the reasons behind what resulted in her asking non-stop questions to her mother, who in turn gave me looks that would send chills down anyone’s spine.

While states/precincts in other Asian countries are giving official menstrual leaves to working women, I am standing here thinking of explaining something which is absent from the socially acceptable lexicon of the supposedly developed minds of our country.

jeejivishaAuthor – Jeejivisha Kale

Jeejivisha is a 22-year-old woman in a complicated relationship with her ‘auto-correct!’
To quote Sylvia Plath: Let me live, love and say it well in good sentences.

Edited by – Divya Rosaline

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