“Mahina ka woh chaar din bohot kharab jataa hai, waise dhanda nahi ho raha fir woh chaar din ka loss. Acha nahi lagta mujhe; kamayenge nahi to khayenge kya” (It’s horribly tough, those four days of the month. We are anyway not able to get business, how will we eat if we don’t earn?)– after completing those words exhales Laxmi*, a sex worker from Sonagachi, Kolkata.
Like every other day, I was crossing Sonagachi lane after office and I met Laxmi, a 38-year-old sex worker trafficked from Bangladesh and sold into a brothel in Sonagachi. Last time I met her during the sanitary napkin distribution event, she shared her stories with me that how she got pregnant and ended up with post-miscarriage infections; because she had no proper idea about menstruation. For her, it’s “kharab khoon” (bad blood) which is bad for health.
So I understood how these women are risking their lives in this profession without having any proper knowledge of menstruation-related things. Being the most stigmatized community in the society, they have always been excluded from societal norms like- identity, social approval, literacy, equality, health, hygiene and many more. It’s been more than 4 years that I am working with this community and have I heard lots of stories same as Laxmi from women related to the sex trade.
The concept of Project Masik mantra came from here. We need to talk more about menstrual health in this community like chanting Mantras, so it is named as “Masik Mantra”. This campaign is all about making the sex worker community aware and avail the menstrual health management among the sex worker community. Which I believe is their right too. Every day, a sex worker gets infected to different diseases for not having proper sanity or the knowledge to maintain their hygiene. Menstruation is something directly related to their profession but unfortunately, most of the community is unaware of its facts.
These kinds of issues are highly sensitive and can be controlled by the decision-makers only. Being an individual, it’s impossible to provide access to an entire community, so I thought about one such decision-maker who is perfect for this issue. I chose Dr Shashi Panja, who is the MLA of this locality and also the Minister of Women & Child Development department, Social affairs. Along with that, she is also a medical practitioner specialising in Ultrasound and Infertility practice.
Her profile is an exact match for my campaign because she is a doctor looking after the Women Development Department. So I tried to reach out to her through calls and emails, and it took a lot of time to get connected to her due to her busy schedule. But, finally, I reached out to her and explained to her about the campaign and she appreciated it. On the other hand, I met the local councillor of the Sonagachi area and gave her the proposal letter of my campaign to seek the local support.
Meeting with these decision-makers helped me to speak about the problems related to menstrual health on behalf of the community which wasn’t done before. Their appreciation gave me some light of hope, at least their stories will be heard now. Slowly but surely, people will be aware of menstruation. I am not going to stop here. I will continue this until their right to sanity is reserved.
To spread this campaign, I am going to use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc where people can spread the news by sharing my posts with others. I do have a Facebook page Project Masik Mantra one can follow to get updated on my work. I am trying to reach out to a large number of people through lives on social media. An online petition has been raised regarding this campaign which successfully got more than 4000 signatures and we’re looking for more. Here is the link. All these actions are part of the agenda to spread awareness among the society that this is the time now we have to do something to protect their healthy existence.