This is a fictional account of how damaging can menstrual taboos and silence about reproductive health be for both men and women, and how men can support and encourage women and families to understand menstruation better and join hands to empower #PeriodPride.
“This blogathon is supported by the Maya App, used by 6.5 million women worldwide to take charge of their periods and health.”
In the small village Rohera
near Rohtak, Manveer was the youngest of his five older sisters, well technically
one of them- Mamta, his twin just two minutes older than him. She was the only
daughter of the house his father and grandmother were kind too, because she had
brought along a brother, an heir of the family.
While they were very young,
all the older girls were married hurriedly, one after the other. Manveer was
not very close to any of them and spent some time with them only on Rakshabandhan.
By the time Manveer and
Mamta were ten years old, they were the only kids left around the house. The
older sisters, three of them now had kids of their own and visited occasionally
during the festivals.
The youngest of the four – Asha,
however came more often, beaten and thrown out by her in-laws, as even after
two years of marriage she had no kids. Manveer felt bad for her, he wanted to
‘protect’ her as he promised on Rakshabandhan
every year. He wished he knew where babies could be brought from and he
could bring her one.
Just days before their
eleventh birthday, they were told Asha had died; she had jumped into the
village well. He went with his father and uncles for her last rites and thought
finally she was free of the humiliation and pain of not having children. Every
one said women must have children; those who didn’t were useless to their
families and society.
A few days later, his
mother prohibited Mamta to play with him in the fields or go out alone for
toilet. He argued a lot as to why he could and she couldn’t but his usually
condescending mother only told him, “She is a big girl now and will soon be
married off, so he should learn to stay away from her.”
Mamta stopped going to
school also and would now work more around the house all the time, wear
‘chunni’ all the time and often complain of stomach aches. He could see her in
pain sitting in a corner of the courtyard but during the ‘secret’ pains he was
not allowed to sit near her and was told to avoid talking to her.
Soon Manveer found new
friends in High School and just as the case was with all his other sisters grew
distant from Mamta. It was their 15th birthday and now just like big
cities and films, he used to cut a cake and have a cold drinks and burger party
for his friends, all boys of course.
Mamta was not allowed to
come out and interact with any outside boys and men. As he sat flaunting his
new mobile phone to his friends, he noticed her quickly slip into the newly
made toilet in the house.
Minutes later, there was
blood in the drain that ran out of the toilet at the edge of the courtyard.
Manveer rushed to the toilet and asked Mamta if she was alright, he presumed
she had fallen and hurt herself badly.
All his friends were
sniggering meanwhile and the oldest of them Dinesh, pulled him away and told
him she was okay, maybe having her ‘monthly woman problem’.
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| Image Courtesy : Google |
Manveer knew a little about
sex and how women had genitals (breasts and vagina) different than his own but
he didn’t know anything about a ‘woman problem’. Dinesh was there expert on all
issue related to women and sex. He even had videos of village girls bathing, or
using the fields to defecate and proudly shared them around.
Dinesh told him that girls
were ‘dirty’ every month for a few days and bled from ‘down there’ for a few
days, only after they started bleeding every month, they could be ‘impregnated’
by a man.Dinesh was also constantly
making fun of him and his sister’s stupidity and ignorance. He even made some
crude jokes about Mamta’s body, Manveer didn’t like it but Dinesh was older and
stronger and was kind of leader of the pack so he couldn’t retaliate.
Later as he returned home
‘ashamed’ and angry he told his mother how Mamta had made a spectacle of him in
front of his friends, didn’t she know that the drain was open and didn’t she
have any shame exposing her ‘dirtiness’ to boys.
His mother was very angered
and as he sat outside with a glass of milk he was happy as she hit Mamta
repeatedly with an iron tong. Ever since that day Mamta never looked at him
directly, she would try to avoid him and stay out of his way at all times.
Soon after his Matriculation,
he was sent to a hostel in the city and now he only rarely saw her. Family
members were trying to get a good match for her is all he heard about her.
Then one day in winters the
same year, his warden hurriedly sent him home citing an emergency. As he
reached home he knew someone had died, maybe his old grandmother. The dead body
was kept on the brick floor, it was Mamta’s.
He was told she died of
typhoid. It had been ten days; he was eagerly awaiting his return to the hostel
after the thirteenth day rituals when he found Mamta’s mobile phone in one of
the drawers of his room in the house. It was one of his old phones that he had
given to her, so that at times he could call on that to speak to his mother.
He switched it on out of
curiosity. No messages, no call details. No photos. Only one video, he opened
it. It was dark and shaky, some girl inside a dimly lit toilet, half-naked, it
was Mamta removing a blood soaked rag from her underwear and replacing it with
a clean one.
The video was only a minute
long, he played it again and again and couldn’t understand why or what of it,
but it filled him with anger and disgust. The angle was definitely from a hole
in the roof across the outer wall.
So someone had made this
and had sent it to Mamta? Why? He tried calling the number from which had been
received but it was switched off. There were no answers for the curious
questions in his mind, he could not tell such a shameful thing to his parents.
He felt humiliated and violated, just like his sister.
Could it be Dinesh? But he
had died due to a drug overdose months ago. After worrying about it for a
couple of weeks though he went back to his hectic routine and forgot all about
it.
Years later, just a week
before his marriage as he was arranging his personals in his cupboard in that
ancestral house, he stumbled on a tin box full of childhood stuff. In there he
also found a faded big foam and glitter flower-shaped golden Rakhi, the last Mamta had tied to him.
He held it tightly remembering her and there it was a small strip of paper
taped under it. Mamta’s suicide note – it had brief broken sentences about her
wishes for his long life, her agony, the blackmail, the shame, the frustration
of silence, there were no names but a lot of claustrophobia between the lines.
Manveer quit his job with
an MNC immediately after, he had found his life’s purpose. He initiated a start-up
that made low cost sanitary napkins for village girls and was dedicated to
menstruation awareness. He named the two programs ASHA and MAMTA.
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| Image Courtesy : Google |
Every time a young village
girl spoke confidently about periods, without shame, he felt his sister lived
again. His enterprise was committed to ensure awareness that during
menstruation women and girls must not be excluded from using water and
sanitation facilities safely and without shame, must be able to participate
fully in social, educational, productive, and religious activities and never be
‘ashamed’ about their bodies.
His workshops included
young boys too as he believed that often in their lack of awareness it was boys
like he himself once was made girls feel ashamed. Even if they wanted to talk
about menstruation, they were prohibited to discuss menstrual issues with their
mothers or sisters or their fathers and older men. As a result they had
half-baked knowledge and used crude terms for it, teased girls and often acted
insensitively or completely indifferent.
Now he was married and had
a little girl and a little boy of his own. He was far better informed now and
knew that they will be better siblings to each other than he was to his
sisters. He knew and always said in all his workshops –
“Periods are not a woman’s
problem; they are man and woman pride, the symbol of birth, the sign of the human
ability to reproduce.”
He was one of the strongest
voices now in the field of menstruation awareness and wanted more and more men
and boys to join him in facilitating women and girls to exercise their reproductive
health rights with joy, without any apprehension, stigma or taboo.
ASHA and MAMTA were
flourishing, without fear, without shame.
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