Period Pride with Papa

I grew up in small town India in the 80s, and in the 90s during my teenage years PERIODS was considered one of the dirtiest words ever. There were horrendous incidents of my friends spotting their school skirts and then walking (yes walking, we lived in a hill station) with great difficulty to home covering the spot with a sweater or a blazer, the school’s small infirmary didn’t have any ready to use sanitary pads back then and most mothers and older sisters still living in their time wrap to even talk about it. At homes those four-five days meant isolation and untouchability (girls were considered impure during periods.)

I was almost 13 plus and awaiting my periods to begin still when my father (yes you read it right) my father- papa sat me down to talk to me about periods. He first asked me what I knew about my body and anatomy and the changes happening to me as a young girl. I told him my sketchy know-how garnered from biology chapters and library books and even a sanitary pad company sponsored workshop in school about periods but I also told him about my fears about periods and how most of my friends use what they called “rough cloth” and how it kept them discomforted those 4-5 days.






He talked to me in a very technical and non- evasive way about periods, asked me what I would prefer using the new belted sanitary napkins that were the norm then or we can make our own disposable ones using cotton gauze and cotton, because he didn’t want me to use “rough cloth” like the other girls.






I loved making things with my engineer dad so I said okay let’s make our own, and that’s how I was taught to made my first disposable cotton gauze sanitary napkins by my father. A few months later I also got used to sometimes using the commercial ones and then came another major hurdle- I had a major leg surgery for which one of my full legs was in plaster. Two days later I got my periods. Lying straight in a bed with a wet pad wasn’t a good feeling at all, that’s when my father in the pre-internet days did some research and found about tampons. He bought me some and not only advised me to use those but helped me change them too, I was 15.







That one parent-child moment changed my perception of body image, sexuality, menstruation and gender forever. I passed on my new-found knowledge, confidence and ease about periods to many friends though both me and my father got labelled as "strange" as a result most of the time.



Ever since I was always eloquent about menstruation awareness and related issues and now that my father is no more and I am myself a parent to a pre-teen girl I realize in that one moment my father gave me that voice and that confidence.






He never allowed anyone in the family including my religious mother to put any menstruation related restrictions on me regarding going to the temple/kitchen in the house or touching the pickle. I could tell him I am having menstrual cramps and he would make the best hot chocolate ever and give me a hot water bag to place on my tummy.








Yes I was so blessed to have such an evolved parent who moved beyond the pre-defined boundaries of "masculinity", fatherhood and motherhood and dis all he could to raise a strong, confident, feminist-humanist who is committed for life to keep using her voice and agency to pass on the favor to as many young girls as I can.

My late father with my daughter

Kadam Chhota, Change Bada!


Every change begins with a small step, whether it’s a change within your family, or the whole country!

On 11th May, is the digital premiere of India’s Hero, Padman, on ZEE5. Don’t miss this inspiring true-life story, only on ZEE5. Download the app and subscribe now. For every subscription, ZEE5 will donate Rs. 5 towards the personal hygiene needs of underprivileged women.

Circle

A friend reminiscences about her grandfather

And the memories are the same

That my daughter has of my late father

Piggy banks, secret treats, stories of once upon a time

Time the smooth operator

Parents become grandparents and memory

Friends, siblings, cousins

Now all aunties and uncles, mom and dads

we lose people to death and to life

and we gain a few along the same ride

Age keeps ticking like a silent clock

We are all in a circle

Called life.

A day in my magical life

the smog sits heavy
like the carcass of
a dead relationship

in the rhythmic jostling of
a cycle rickshaw
lies the irony
of the ego spins
we derive
from the race
for being the superlative

the sedatives are strong
they blur memory
and sensation
but pain can't be extracted
like a rotten tooth

my fingers itch
my eyes twitch
looking for the next object
to scrub
while my mind fiddles
why ? why?

my late father's voice
reading out aloud
the laws of insulation

I know he is dead
I know the word "hallucination"

I close my eyes
and I jump off the cliff of self
into me

now I scrub
my soul's lamp
waiting for
some real magic.

 

Zen in life & death ( in the memory of my late father)

Z

 

 

Blogging from A to Z Challenge [April 2015]

 

  

We used to talk a lot

about death

and yet

your physical absence

is so heavy to bear

 

the suddenness with

which you disappeared

person-body-ashes-water-nothing

 

was that the last birthday gift

teaching me

"m-e-t-a-m-o-r-p-h-o-s-i-s"

one more time

 

I was always

your strong girl

in your version of me

I could take on

the world

on my own

 

Maybe I could

because you stood

by me

as a shield

 

Now you are

my arrow and my bow

my aims and my means

 

you were warmth

and now you are light

 

I read this poem

to myself

every night

 

and I know

you are watching

me do it right.

 

 

******************************************

 

A VERSE I READ OFTEN FOR MY DAD

 

 

 

       "Love never disappears for death is a non-event.

I have merely retired to the room next door.

You and I are the same; what we were for each other, we still are.

Speak to me as you always have, do not use a different tone, do not be sad.

Continue to laugh at what made us laugh.

Smile and think of me.

Life means what it has always meant.

The link is not severed.

Why should I be out of your soul if I am out of your sight?

I will wait for you, I am not here, but just on the other side of this path.

You see, all is well.”

- St. Augustine

Pay it Forward Parenting (in the memory of my late father)

 

 

Today when I am a parent myself, I feel some of my most special lessons in parenting come from my father. These were not written in some kind of a rule book or spoken aloud like quotable quotes but these came to me in actions that were louder than any words.

•  About three and a half decades ago in a quaint little town you were a diaper dad by choice. I understood parenthood as being better than the highly popularised motherhood.

• I always saw you helping mummy around the house, especially with my tasks- tiffin, getting the school dress in order, homework. My first lessons in gender-neutral parenting and partnership.

• Unlike a lot other homes, me and mummy would watch a cricket match and you would make us tea. So the first person who broke down gender stereotypes within the family for me was you.

• In teenage years, periods or sanitary napkins weren’t a taboo, I could talk to mummy or I could talk to you. It made me so much at ease with my body and my sexuality.

• Unlike a lot of parents, contrary to public opinion and even your own preference for the Sciences you supported me when I opted for Humanities right after school. There was no pressure to be someone I was not.

• You kept struggling with your own patriarchal upbringing to accept my male friends, boyfriend, my independent lifestyle choices, but you never held them against me even when some of them went horribly wrong. You allowed me my mistakes and their lessons.

• You always told me no matter what you were proud of me and that you would always love me. This realisation is such a huge part of my self-worth.

• You always believed and displayed so much of confidence in my abilities that I could push my boundaries every single time. You gave me all my strength.

Trying to raise my child with self-belief, gender-sensitivity, an independent mind and a strong voice, just like what my father did for me.


This post is an entry for father’s day contest by kreativemommy



Jottings for the Journey(in the memory fo my late father)

J

 

Blogging from A to Z Challenge [April 2015]

 

 



 

 

You taught me how to walk

and get up

every time I fall

 

You taught me

strength

and how my gender had

nothing to do with it

at all

 

You allowed me

my mistakes

and face my fears

 

you taught me to

look for life lessons

and never be shy of

memories & tears

 

and somewhere along

some day

in your mysterious way

 

you had led me on

to this realisation

 

the journey is

always the destination !

Death Certificate - in the memory of my late father

D

 

Blogging from A to Z Challenge [April 2015]

 

A piece of paper

to make me believe

it wasn't a bad dream
the pyre, the cremation
are fears my overactive mind
replayed
 

 

a disinterested old man's

blank stare

from behind the piles

of files

thousands of deaths

stocked as papers

as legal statistics

 

no record

of the empty beds

unused creams, toothpastes

specs through which
his eyes saw the world

his rosary wrapped on my wrist

to feel his rough, old fingertips
to hear him murmur
his sacred chant

 

questions unanswered

I love yous

whys ,unsaid

a 22 second sound recording

a blurry video

of him having his evening chai
in an inexpensive mobile

 

a death certificate

for a date and a time

none for the years

and moments

gone forever.

 

 



Blessing of being a BIBLIOPHILE- in the memory of my late father

                                       Blogging from A to Z Challenge [April 2015 ]

                                                   B

 

In the various homes that I have lived in since I ever remember there was always less space and more books. On the shelves, side tables, bed boxes even wardrobes. My mother who was herself a teacher and is an avid reader till date did not understand me- as to what kind of a girl would put her dresses aside to make more room for books.

Where did I get my first taste of books from?

As old timers in Shimla will tell you, in the extreme last segment of shops on The Mall, towards the HPTDC lift there used to be the old Asia Book House. Whenever and that means every time I would go there papa would buy me a book- a book to read, a sketchbook, a drawing book anything that had a world of wonder enclosed in its covers.

My first ever that I remember clearly was the abridged version of The Count of Monte Cristo. Then came the write-n-wipe ones which were such a novelty then, the hardbound, the imported ones,the fiction, biographies. I was given every genre to try my hands on.

For every small or big achievement, for every occasion I was given a book, memberships to libraries and every possibly opportunity to have and read books. Books are my ticket to the millions of lives I can't possibly live in this one, guardian angels who never give up on me.

I always feel that best fragrance on this planet is not some exotic bottled perfume,  next in line to the fragrance of fresh rain on the parched soil is the fragrance of old books, of libraries, of book stores.

My father himself was not an avid reader. Most of the books he had were technical/professional but he took great care of them and loved them. He had once told me that when he was an engineering student there were no Xerox machines so if one student had a particular sought after book there used to be a waiting list in college to get that book for one day.

So maybe he ensured that I will have no waiting list for books. A day he passed away I was reading Tuesdays with Morrie and a line stood out - Death ends a life not a relationship.

After he passed away,as is customary,I was giving away his things but I kept back one of his books- Industrial Engineering. A hard bound, faded grey cover, from his student days. Its subject matter means nothing to me, but its yellow pages will always remind me that one of my best blessings from my father is my love for books.

Strangely my little one loves books too and I hope some day she knows that this love for books is a blessing.

THE DAY THE LAST LEAF FELL

I had turned 36 that morning and 360 kilometres away he had walked into a hospital never to return. For the first time he had forgotten my birthday and I waited in fear for that ominous phone call.

The next day was HOLI, a festival we both didn’t like too much, the day that was his last.


A few weeks ago the last extended conversation between me and my late father was about strength in the face of
adversity. He cited Guru Granth Sahib:


“Chidya naal main baaz ladava,

Tabhi Guru Gobind Singh naam kahawa”

(I will make the sparrows capable of fighting the hawks, for it is only then that i will be able to uphold my name.)


Little did we know that we would soon be the sparrows fighting the merciless hawk called death. We talked a lot about death and sorrow during his last stay with me a few weeks ago. As I would comb his thinning grey hair, massage his furrowed skin and clip his old nails, I knew he was slowly slipping away.


He would narrate anecdotes from his colourful childhood across the borders to my little one and think about his departed siblings and parents.


My mother and me would look at each other and quietly share an unspoken fear and grief of letting go off him.


On a centuries old highway as the noise around HOLI had died down and I was travelling towards him, hoping against hope, he decided not to wait any longer. I, the loud and expressive one who was as vocal about sorrow as everything else, for the first time in life encountered a voiceless grief. There were no tears, no wailing, only a sea surging inside my chest that had to be contained, because it would then drown everything else.


It was not numbness, but a different kind of awareness. A brief instant in which I had finally grown up. A milestone moment in which I had aged several years, Daddy’s little girl had become a really big girl.


It was a long and cold March night in Shimla. All night I sat next to what they now called his dead body, I lived my 36 years all over again.


The ritualised frenzy up to the cremation was just that, mere ritual. When I lit the pyre a part of my soul went away with him and a huge part of his soul stayed back in mine. My lesson from the crematorium – a body is just a small bit of what a parent is to a child.


The urn that had his remains also had my childhood and memories of his eight decades long life. The journey to the Ganges through an arduous stormy night culminated at the same Ghats where he had walked holding my hand and explained to me the complicated family tree captured
in the circular record books of family priests.


We both loved rivers. I entrusted him to his favourite one and wondered whether I would be able to love the rivers the same way again.


Like my breath that I can’t see only experience he stays back in me. I will miss his hugs and his voice, but his warm smile shall envelope my heart forever.


Like his old-fashioned cursive handwriting, his papers, his books, photos, me and my child have his distinct carving on our beings.


Life is only lived in a linear manner, it is indeed circular. My little one snuggles close to me and murmurs in half-asleep – Mummy I will be your papa now and you are my grandpa.

I close my eyes and am more determined to live on in peace for him and for my little girl.