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“You are still lazing in bed ! I left you an hour ago , have done ten thousand odd steps and you have not moved an inch.”
I smiled back continuing to sip my lemon tea from my favorite glass cup. I just felt like overindulging into another warm cup today. Is that a problem ?
Look I need to go for work ! So will you get up and prepare breakfast and pack my lunch please?
I looked at the clock . I still had a royal one and a half hour left to do the needful . Another five minutes would not matter. I continued to sip and observed him moving around the house with some restlessness. I still had to be a part of the ruckus that would soon be created as he would prepare to leave for something as simple as work. It had not changed in 20 years .Apologetically I said, “Yes I am just getting up . I am not feeling too good , having dysmenorrhea, I said meekly.
“He glared at me with disbelief . “Dysmenorrhea ? ? I can understand my daughter having it .You are reaching menopause and now you are having dysmenorrhea “ .This time he smirked .Are you kidding ?
Why am I not supposed to ? I retaliated and could sense my anger rising for no specific reason . Is that so unusual or you never heard the term before?
Off-course I know ! I have also passed OBG like you and I know about periods. Besides you have never complained . Come on it is not that bad .
He walked away . Did he ?
I was fuming at 7:30 A.M . for no apparent reason . Born to a Gynaecologist mother , I was introduced to the term “Maheena / Mahavaari ” pretty early in childhood. I had no doubt that every woman was troubled by it and it was termed the monthly curse. Little later and new fancy nomenclature as chums/menses came to my knowledge , today I understand it as the Moon phase.
Period? Date ? LMP?
The illiterate could not count the dates . The newlyweds blushed as they made a mention of it .The pregnant preferred forgetting about it for nine months and seven days . The nursing mothers kept guessing it. The unprotected cursed it .The unwed got crucified for defaming it. The Muslims oscillated between the Meethi Eid and Ramzan trying to remember the Chaand. The professionals and fast trackers suffered it . The flat chested wished they had more of it . The bleeding ones wished it to be less. The overweight wished it to be regular. The barren were angry with it. The devout wished to postpone it . The hard working students hated it for their grades suffered.
A short statured child in my school years I stood at the second place in the class row . I was relieved I was not the shortest. Being a part of the school choir , I joined the school assembly at the back behind the tallest girl right after the national anthem for the P.T. It was then I began to notice the red stains over their white skirts . Menstruation as a topic was not a part of school curriculum . Those days of the month and even the house leaders would not participate in annual sports events and sit frustrated in corners. Some would run the race only to hold their cramping pelvis tightly while the results were awaited. Something was clearly wrong with them and I knew the reason behind it .Few girls would excuse themselves and rush to the rest rooms midway between class tests and some would spent the entire recess there. Peculiar ones sat glued to their seats till the school got over with gloomy faces. One of my friends sat in a wet skirt for the entire day in school only to get up and go home. No guesses that she was the last one to step out of school that day. The school had a stationary shop next to the fee-counter with a stern looking nun . The nun in the sick room was a no nonsense kind of person and nobody wanted to approach her even if one was dying . The restroom was a preferred place for having these hush- hush conversations around periods. Funnily while my mom treated half the world’s woman folk she could not get me to menstruate. Late bloomer she called me. At times she scrutinized me to look for evidence of secondary sexual characters and it felt like a horrible intrusion of privacy. I was terrified whenever she questioned me about it because I overheard her explaining to a mother about her daughter’s diagnosis after her evaluation. The lady left in tears . The grand-mother cursed the girl right there and called her a eunuch. They never came back for another consultation except to make a small request to my mother not to divulge this information.
Obviously, the wise women never tell what needs to remain untold. I was so tensed those days that I lost my sleep over it and prayed to God to give me my periods soon for the fear of ending up like her. And it happened right after my boards when my school life was over and I could not share my pride of stepping into womanhood with my friends. I was happy and I knew that this occurrence would gift me height , contours of body and I was going to have babies someday. But between entry into woman hood to its exit a female spends an average 3500 days ( approximately ten years of her reproductive life ) chumming along and managing it. The feeling of blood clinging to feminine body parts is very real and even the realization that she even smells differently those days. She is more conscious those days of the forbidden laws in both bedrooms and temples . I have been no exception and I was already pre-conditioned into taking it absolutely normally , carrying on with my activities and not complaining. It was no big deal so dysmenorrhea ( painful periods) is not a part of my period story .I never saw my mother fussing over it either . It did not strike me till much later that she already had a hysterectomy (uterus removal operation ) at 29 because of pre-cancerous condition of cervix and being the wise woman she was, she requested her doctor to remove it urgently. But I did see her on a hormonal therapy regimen for years when it was still in vogue and expensive . She required the pills to control her mood swings , headaches, hot flushes ,fluctuating blood pressures and she needed to function .She suffered hormonally even if the diseased uterus was out of her system. Same goes for the multitude of hormonal treatment options available to bleeding women. They are just different doses , durations , agents with lesser side effects each claiming to be better than the previous popular ones. I would have preferred interviewing some of these women who contributed to these drugs becoming popular therapies by agreeing to be a part of the drug trials before they actually hit the market . I wish to know how they felt while the hormones played havoc in their bodies and whether these drugs restored regularity and peace in their dysfunctional bleeding patterns . Did these therapies also help in rewiring the broken cords of their tired bodies with their mental- emotional –spiritual connection . Something which women have themselves managed to cut leading over busy lives .
Why then the mothers, aunts , grandmothers teach to guard menstruation like a big secret not to be known to the male members ? What if they knew to question it rather early ? Why not let them wonder why is the sister spending an extra half an hour inside the bathroom ? Why is the food being ordered from outside while the mother is resting ? Why not let them question that pink bed sheet left to dry outside at six in the morning ? Why not sensitize them to stains on female clothing sometimes? Why not make it apparent to husbands that irritability is because it is tough to wear nylon underwear in the sultry heat ? Why ignore the painful rashes and pretend to walk awkwardly at work places?
At the Muslim university I did my SSC there were more than 2000 girls studying and staying in the campus at any point of time yet there was only a single shop owned by Bittan Bhai . He sold sanitary napkins along with stationary. I am sure that single item was the most sold item any day. It was an embarrassing task to ask Bittan Bhai to hand us a pack of sanitary napkin almost in a whisper. He would pack them in an exact sized newspaper envelopes and place it in a black polythene bag and make it more obvious. So many useless items would be bought along with that pack and some Burqa clad women waited hours to camouflage the black bag with the Burqa they wore. We hid them underneath Dupattas, armpits, and hand bags. It was an art we had all mastered and it just felt odd. As if we all wanted to hide it, from whom ? For what ? A herd mentality perhaps gifted to us like a genetic code.
Medical college was slightly better . We could joke about it as we made fun of some oversized reusable old manly wear displayed every month which some girls used. They were still resistant to convenient lingerie and unaware that even Whisper had developed wings by then . We felt a little more in control while picking our pads from medical shops and Bittan Bhai soon phased out from memory . We were becoming bolder and managed to drop some shame and taboo around menstruation . We were reading in detail about the anatomy and functioning of female organs and learnt to spell out Estrogen and progesterone properly as we had to write elaborate notes on their function . Smart male medical students rattled off the “menstrual cycle definition “ as the monthly loss of 35- 40 ml of blood in females in their reproductive age group lasting 4-6 days. That was so spot on . They just had no practical knowledge and made us laugh while they described it like a tap that opened at intermittent intervals . Though the books made us more knowledgeable about menstrual disorders, reasons and the treatment they was no glossary about the discomfort of those days, the soakage, the seep through to become see through and the reasons why even some medical lady students sacrificed attendance because they themselves could not manage their dysmenorrhea.
Thankfully I am blessed with regular twenty eight days duration and an average flow. I am happy to be getting rid of it on the fourth day but I do understand the plight of those who exceed all these normal parameters and need to be treated . I have managed my closed door washing rituals well in the wee hours of the morning half asleep and learnt to sit cross legged on long journeys, tied jackets around tight fitting jeans at times, managed with all kinds of clothes at the most inopportune times. I have just walked with stains when I could do nothing about them be it a gathering or an official function . It happens . Post child bearing more shame has been shed as I have seen the seasons of it all .
It is now that I am raising a girl child myself I am teaching her to shed the shame, secrecy and the silence around it. It is nice to watch “ Pad man” together and ask her to shop for a sanitary napkin without being conscious. I answer all her queries along with two paisa put by my son who is equally attentive.
And as I have become more vocal to tell her all about it my own silent shame and pain has broken barriers. It is now that I am embracing the process as it is .
I am learning to appreciate the bloating ,constipation and have abnormal food cravings at odd times and reward myself with the same.
I am willing to lie low and interact less and let my moodiness define itself into irritability , anxiety , heaviness and own the absurdity of it all.
I am convincing myself the appropriateness of “doing nothing” and just feeling my fatigue , back ache ,headache, cramps . I am willing to observe my water retention and allow my body to swell and not worry about the weight gain . I am trying to laze around and sleep as my body demands even if it is at odd hour without being made to feel guilty.
I am partaking in the process to menstruate consciously . I am figuring out the synchronicity between the female body with the bigger forces of nature especially the moon . My experiences have taught me no matter how much spotless a dress I would like to wear it is okay to have some blemishes like the moon. I am watching my body respond to the phases of moon . I am allowing the womb to wake up from her induced amnesia and allowing the womb-wisdom to completely take over and guide me into my own consciousness. I allow the ancestral feminine lineage to visit me in the dream world and help me clean up “our” wounds of abuse, ignorance, pain ,rejection over many lifetimes and timelines. The bodies have perished but the moon has shone brightly witnessing every woman and her sacred moon phase.
