By Already being informed about the menstruation & things to be done after I had my first period by my mom, a 13 y/o girl in me, alone at home, when found out blood emanating from her vagina, didn’t panic.
I post-haste felt like I grew up, a strange feeling of pride & ecstasy got knotted in my heart. But hard on the heels of apprising my mom about it, everything got changed.
I was told how God will shortly bestow me for being a girl. But I didn’t know that a bestowal means to live alone in a room, with new severe pain. I was taught how to use a pad but not about its disposal.
If you’re also unversed about it, at first, please know that you must use a pad instead of clothes and the pad should be changed over a period of time, depending on the flow of blood. And even if the blood flow reduces, it should be changed twice or thrice a day. And when you are done with it, please wrap it with anything & kindly dispose it in a dustbin with a lid, which will be collected as household waste later on by a Garbo.
Most importantly, stay clean, and don’t hesitate to buy a pad. And if someone makes fun of you for carrying a pad uncovered with a paper, they should feel ashamed, not you.
What I didn’t get the most was why God would give us the capability to bleed but wouldn’t want us to go to the temple where he lives? Out of curiosity, to know what might happen if I break the boundaries people had made for us, not only did I visit the temple, also I entered the kitchen & cooked food. And nothing happened.
Dear girls, don’t wait for a change, be a change. Have a good diet & drink a lot of water. Take rest & do a bit of exercise too. Who gave the right to the people to make the rules for what they even didn’t create by themselves? Break these superstitious boundaries. It was not a man who told me that menstruation is a taboo, but a woman herself.
But if we don’t menstruate, how would we be able to become a mother? Yes, I bleed, & so do you.
Feel no shame from today itself. Let’s start the change.
-Arati Banstola
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