10th March, 2008. I still smile to myself when I think of the first time I got my period. It was ironically Holi – the festival of colours. I had woken up early at 5 am to finish my math worksheet on algebraic equations. After a good two hours on it straight out of the bed, I went to the bathroom to freshen up only to notice blood stains. Having just comprehended what happened, I walked to the kitchen to tell mom – half-asleep, half-tensed- about my bathroom discovery. I hesitated as I entered the kitchen and whispered meekly, “Ma, I found blood.” At first, she stared at me point blank, unable to understand if I was referring to an injury or something. I looked perfectly okay on the outside. Then, her expression changed to a knowing one and a smile formed on her lips. She left the chapati rolling pin and ran with me, almost excited on hearing the news.
My first reaction was – why is she excited? Isn’t this supposed to be a painful death of sorts? I had heard from some of my classmates in school that you get terrible cramps and headaches. I had also seen girls going to the infirmary, taking medicine for period pain and when I had discovered my periods, all of those images came flashing to my head. Perhaps for my mother, her excitement stemmed from imagining her little girl transitioning to a young lady – something that I definitely wasn’t ready for.
I don’t think I fully understood what periods even meant when I got them. I wasn’t sure what the big deal about them was but I remember succumbing to the “period stigma” because everybody was so hush-hush about it. On my first day of discovery, after my mother taught me how to use a pad, I remember feeling very dazed when I reached school. My school uniform was a white shirt with a white skirt and I walked into my classroom in extreme slow motion – almost like Jaya Bachchan did in K3G. I felt like I was carrying a heavy barrel of liquid, careful not to spill any ‘content’. I don’t remember being able to concentrate either – all I did was sit stiff the whole day like a statue. I also made countless trips to the bathroom to adjust my pad and ensured that I had no stains on my skirt.
In school, getting a stain on a skirt was almost akin to public shaming. The girls in the StayFree ads were the most fascinating ones to me for I never understood how they ran around in white pants without staining themselves. They had set standards of period perfection and were inspiration to us ‘mortals’ who would stain our pants with just a slight bend or a twist. I have also been a witness to numerous instances of my friends attempting to hide those stains – either by tying a sweater around their waist, or stapling the pleats of the skirt, using chalk to colour the required portion, wearing the skirt inside out or just getting other girls to help them wash it in the bathroom. I remember bathrooms being an area of human interaction and girl bonding. Come to think of it, I have made so many friends with girls whom I had never spoken to before just because we have had a “bathroom chat”.
In hindsight, those instances now seem funny but back then, it was a nightmare to get your period, especially if you have dance practice or a sports event the next day. I remember I had a run-through for Sports Day and it was out on the open ground. I was so tired that I wasn’t able to walk; I was losing blood in heavy flow. I exempted myself from the run-through, thereby missing the main practice but I had people coming up to me later, asking me if I was okay – which in my mind made up for missing it. I also felt borderline undeserving of the attention because it was just periods which is a natural process. But sometimes, I wouldn’t deny – that extra pampering every girl on her period receives is indeed worth the pain and the cramps.
Since my first discovery, I’m now 12 years older and more carefree about my periods. I now choose what kind of pads I want and I’m very specific about which ones to use on which days of my cycle, a luxury I couldn’t think of earlier. I would just take what I’d get. The perception to periods has also tilted – there is no hiding anymore – of stains, pads or period. In fact, I no longer see shopkeepers wrapping pads up in a black polythene cover or girls hiding their stains. In fact, now walking with a pad in your hand has become a symbol of rebellious empowerment. Even Amazon Prime’s Four More Shots had a scene where one of the characters asks her date to use her unused pad as a tissue. Although this shift in period talk seems progressive, I think it runs the risk of being accused of being masked as a defence mechanism of repressed feminist emotions.
For me, my colourful start of periods is the beginning of a conversation where period lies in a spectrum – neither of demeaning it nor of glorifying it – but just accepting that it can have different shades, like colours do, like people do, like normal things in the world do. I will neither call it impure, nor will I romanticise it by calling it pure, sacred and holy. Period can be welcoming and warm and it can also be messy and irritating. It can keep you aloof/moody and can also help you find a friend for life. My period story is about understanding, de-colonising, humanising and fully embracing all the shades a Period can be.