“Rahul, wake up early tomorrow, you have to help me in preparing food for Ganesh Chaturthi festival”, ordered Komal to her son.
“Why? Di always helps you in kitchen, why you are asking me to help you this time?”
“She can’t help me tomorrow since she isn’t feeling well. Also, since your dad is out of station, you have to do Ganesh Chaturthi Pooja.”
“Why? Why? Ok, Di isn’t feeling well, so she will not help you in kitchen. But she can at least do Ganesh Pooja. This would make her feel good.”
“Rahul understand something that I am saying, she isn’t feeling well and can neither help me in kitchen nor do all this pooja stuff. You’ll have to do this all tomorrow. Do you understand this?”
….. (Next day)
“No, no Ritika don’t touch that bottle. Oh god! Why did you touch it? It was for our drinking purpose, not yours. Now I’ll have to wash that bottle before we can use it”, Komal said in an annoying tone to Ritika, her daughter.
By now, you must have understood what happened to Ritika – she was in her periods. Damn it! It means she was bleeding and technically was “impure” for 3 days. Impure? What does that mean? – that means she can’t do any worshipping or other religious rituals, can’t enter kitchen and can’t clean utensils etc. No, she can’t roam around freely in home, she’ll have to take care that there is no stain “on that place” and she’ll have to think 100 times before sitting, standing, laying on bed and changing her sleeping postures. Most importantly, and very unluckily for all those who consider females just a “sex starving machines”, she can’t perform an intercourse – oh shit! How sad? Who made these ‘fucking’ rituals? I know many creeps would curse menstruation just because they can’t satisfy their sexual needs when their girlfriend or wife is bleeding.
Come on, isn’t it just a biological process that happens in a female? – Girls bleed because they need to shed some unfertilized eggs which get dissolved in blood and flush through their vagina.
Have you ever understood about a female’s pain during menstruation? Cramps or very sharp pains in the abdomen is a usual pain during bleeding. Irony, she has to hide this pain and bear it alone, without telling to the ‘males’ of the family.
How good have you feel seeing those sanitary pad advertisements on TV that arouse your ‘sexual feelings’? Yes, your mother/ sister/ girlfriend/ friend/ wife/ daughter has to spend her entire day covering her vagina with same sanitary pads. Have you ever felt how much painful would it be?
Yes, these are same sanitary pads that females have to bring in black polythene bags when they buy it from pharmacy bags, so that they don’t feel ashamed of passer-byes.
I read somewhere that this was a ritual in old days and it was a token of “good behaviour” from mother-in-law to her daughter-in-law. D-I-L would be set free for 3 days – from all household work since M-I-L could feel the pain of menstruation. Even if this theory is right, why weren’t Daughter-in-laws allowed to worship god which could make them feel better?
Other theory that has been quite prevalent relates to a statement given by priest of Kamakhaya temple, where he says that females during menstruation are living goddesses. They aren’t allowed under temples since if they come under direct contact with the idol, they have a special power to absorb all the energies from God’s idol and make it powerless. Really? If this is the case, why females are allowed inside temples during Navratas?
To all those females reading this, please don’t consider yourselves and your mother/ daughter/ friend/ sister impure when she is in her menstruation. We, males, were/ are/will always be born only because our mothers didn’t/ don’t/will not bleed during those 9 months of our birth. If your blood is impure, we must be impure, if we are pure, your blood has to be pure and sacred.
To all those males reading this, let’s not make this discussion or process a taboo any more. Let’s accept it is a common phenomenon occurring to each female after a certain age. If we want to discuss, let’s discuss about the pains that they have to bear and how we can make the things even little bit easy for each female during that particular time.