I still remember, when I was in the 6th standard that was the first time when I got to know about “menstruation”. A seminar was conducted only for girls where all the girls of class 6th, 7th and 8th were called and the marketing team of famous sanitary pads company showed us a presentation about what it is? , what are the symptoms? how to handle? what are the taboos? and etc. etc. But what the strange thing about that seminar used to be was that after exposing us to such an important part of our life we were said not to share it with the boys in our class.
I think this is where the problem begins. When a place which is our alma mater is teaching us that we shouldn’t talk about it openly then how could we expect a change? Second place which plays the most important part of our life is our home. There also the situation was no different. In the start when I got my periods for the first or second time, when I was learning to handle myself in those days, I skipped my school once and when my brother asked mom why am I skipping school? she told him that I was having a fever. These are just two experiences that I am narrating there are many , I think there will be at least 1 with every girl.
“The visitors”, ” I am down’, “Chumming” these are just one of the few words that are used in our society to refer that we are on periods. There is a lot of euphemism about menstruations all over the world. Nowadays, we are talking about switching to biodegradable sanitary pads because it takes 500-600 years to completely dispose of a sanitary pad which is a really important issue to be resolved but for that women should start using pads firstly. Studies shows that 88% of Indian women still don’t use sanitary pads beacuse they aren’t affordable but i think major problem is that they are not aware of it.They use rags, ash, hay, newspaper, old clothes, newspaper in those days which not only create hygiene problems but also leading to some serious diseases like cervical cancer. Menstruation is still ostracized. Women are treated differently during those days. They are considered impure, they are asked to sleep on floor, not to enter kicthen, not to touch pickels, not to have cold things, not to go near fire etc. etc. These are just some myths that are still practiced in our society . People consider it as some disease and even many girls and women are convinced enough that they are dying of cancer when they start bleeding.
These was all about being at personal level. Now coming to commercial level. We see advertisements of sanitary pads when the blood is shown blue in color. We need to tell the society that the “Blue is Red”. In recent days while watching “Big Boss” I came accross an incident where Hina Khan was telling Vikas Gupta not to talk about “the girls problem” . Why was she stating it as girls problem ? She could have used the word menstruation itself. But no, this is how our society address it. We are not allowed to talk about it openly. We are not allowed to show what we go through in those days instead we are treated like we have committed some crime. We need to change this . We need to talk about it openly because this is part of every women life.
Yet the time is changing . Last few years have been revolutionary. Now we celebrate Menstrual Hygiene Day. In urban areas people are being more vocal about it. But to spread awareness we need to be vocal on our personal levels. There should be more campaigns about it to provide the right information .We should start talking about it in our schools, homes, workplaces. It would be nice if talk more clearly and scientifically about our bodies because it’s not only about how openly we talk about it but to increase women health.
Ronita's mind 