By Sanskriti Pandey:
In India, the uncomfortable reality of menstruation comes wrapped in black. Carefully packaged and veiled in perfumed textures, sanitary pads are associated with the “worst kept secret in the world” – menstruation. On one hand, as pads began to be used as symbols to reverse the erasure of tabooed topics and normalize the process, in other news, there are shopkeepers that think that not wrapping pads in black polythene bags while purchase is ‘westernisation’.
PrankBaaz decided to test the ground reality and reveal just how misconstrued the dialogue around women and their periods is. When a woman goes around asking medical store shopkeepers about why they gave her the sanitary napkins wrapped in black packets, she was met with strange silence or mumbling. But their reactions after she left the stores is what’s most shocking. Reeking of twisted ideas of a ‘modern Indian woman’, this video will leave you quite disgusted, but also highlight the importance of dialogue and education around such regressive taboos in India. Watch!
