Reena is my friend and this is her story. She is an 18-year-old student in Muzaffarpur, India. She is studying social sciences and humanities at LS college, Muzaffarpur. This story has been told to be by her.
Six years ago, I was in the fifth grade and my instructors were arranging a school outing to the nearby Bodh Gaya. A hundred talkative understudies were to go there, take part in touring the place and returning during the evening.
At that age, getting a month to month visit from a specific grisly companion was moderately exceptional. The young men were kept oblivious and my companions and I discussed it in quieted tones. Getting one’s period was unnerving and nobody was especially amped up for this transitioning custom. To make us feel better, the instructors requested that we inform them in the event that we get our periods and consoled us that we’d be able to deal with it.
I got mine while leaving for the trip. It wasn’t my first time, yet I told an instructor in any case and jumped on the transport vehicle we were going on.
One of the places of interest in Bodh Gaya was an enormous, noteworthy sanctuary. My friends and I went inside and wondered about the carvings (or picked our noses; I don’t recall). As we left, another instructor pulled me aside and inquired as to whether I had my period. I said yes. Her appearance changed right away and in an unnerving, irate voice, she revealed to me this:
“How could you go inside the sanctuary at that point? Don’t you know? Hasn’t your mom told you that you can’t venture inside a sanctuary when you have your period? Call your mom tomorrow; I need to meet her!”
I thought I’d made the biggest mistake of my life. I was humiliated. I apologized and got onto the vehicle, where I spent the whole ride home almost in tears.
I didn’t comprehend why my entering a sanctuary was such a major ordeal, and I was befuddled and restless about what she’d say to my mom the following day. As I quickly told my mother what the instructor had said, a look of nausea crossed her face and she instructed me to unwind. She told me that we don’t have faith in these things. She disregarded the educator’s words and revealed to me that it was a moronic superstition.
The following day, I didn’t meet the educator and she disregarded it. Be that as it may, she had disgraced me for entering the terrifying universe of adolescence, since I’d visited a sanctuary. What sort of person does that?
My mom demonstrated to me that getting my period doesn’t make me a terrible or irregular individual. In any case, others don’t appear to concur. I see varieties of such episodes occurring around me constantly.
In my companion’s family, when ladies get their period, they don’t enter the kitchen. They’re not permitted to cook. I know a family who doesn’t enable their servant to go into their home when it’s her time. As of late, my close relative needed me to go to a neighbor’s pooja – a sort of Hindu supplication custom – however the moment I revealed to her that I had my period, she requested me not come. She disclosed to me that it’s insolent. I was stunned.
I loathe this conviction. I loathe that ladies carelessly tail it and men advocate it. Women are viewed as wiped out, sullied and even unapproachable when they’re on their period. In this way, God clearly detests me when I’m on my period since I can’t hang out with him in a sanctuary. Nourishment loathes me, as well, since I can’t enter the kitchen to spread margarine on bread. I figure a few people likewise despise me, since I can’t go into their home.
Women of India: Whenever somebody requests that you not go to a sanctuary or cook pasta when your red companion is visiting, request them to leave. Ask them for what valid reason they put stock in such antiquated traditions. What’s more, in case you’re a man who has been trusting these wiped out standards for so long, disgrace on you for influencing ladies to take after your Stone Age lifestyle and constraining them to feel anomalous as a result of a typical, solid natural event.
Ladies, menstrual blood isn’t grimy or debased. So, on the off chance that despite everything you have faith in your senseless custom, I’m sad. However, that also means no entering the kitchen or sanctuary when you cut your knee on a sharp surface.
I decline to be dealt with as less skilled, weaker, messy or polluted for being a lady. God adores every one of his kids: rich or poor, man or lady, discharging or not. It’s about time that we talk straightforwardly about feminine cycle in India, a nation that genuinely needs to subdue its taboos each one in turn. I contemplate it uninhibitedly is the main way we’ll complete it.