Once Every Month We Are All Untouchables*

One morning I woke up and concluded I was dying – why else would there be so much blood on my bed? My blood curdling cries brought my mum to my room and she smiled and said, “Ah ! you’re a woman now”, soon followed by a worried expression and then adding, “now we need to have the big talk”. (I was even allowed to stay at home that day – no school, this “period” thing was working out great for me so far). My mum then started telling me about why women menstruate, how long will this will go on for, etc. Amidst all the things she was saying “…your body is able to make a baby now but since you don’t want a baby, it’s going to expel the unused egg out of your body each month…”, the only thing I remember thinking was, “Thank god , I’m not the last one in my class to get my period.”

Girls in my class used to be very competitive like that. Everyone looked up to you if you had started menstruating and these “ladies” would then smugly tell the others, “Don’t worry, you guys will get it soon.” Going back to school the next day (with a big smile) I broke the news to my girl friends – some aww’ed and some (who had already started menstruating) started shooting a barrel of questions at me to make sure I was doing it right.

“So, you slept on the floor last night?”

“And you did not shower today I hope…”

Another quipped from the side, “Make sure you don’t enter the kitchen or the prayer room in your house for the next 3 days.”

I just meekly nodded because none of it made any sense.

So, I went back home that day and narrated the whole story to my mum who said, “In olden days people didn’t want to stain sheets as they would be too embarrassed to take them to the ponds or the wells to wash them which is why they would sleep on the floor while menstruating , but it’s ok for you to sleep on your bed. Blood if not washed away properly will make your body and clothes the perfect breeding ground for bacteria, so not taking a shower is out of question. Period blood is not “dirty” but not cleaning yourself is. And go to whichever room in the house you want.”

That was my first brush with menstruation related taboos growing up in India. The list of “do nots” and “cannots” only got bigger (and more ridiculous) with time. More and more people started telling me about the proper way of behaving during periods. Strangely enough, they all seemed to have the sole purpose of making a woman feel guilty about this natural body process and to hold them back from leading a normal life.

Now, I do understand that these stem back to times very different from ours when they probably did have a valid reason behind them – but the world and our society have moved on since then and clutching on to this outdated advice doesn’t make any sense. The only way to move ahead is by questioning these taboos – do some research and ignore it if it doesn’t have any scientific backing.

Let’s talk about some of the still prevalent menstruation related taboos in India now.

• A menstruating woman should not use the same utensils as rest of the family. So women are treated as “untouchables”* during menstruation.

• A woman is “impure” during her periods and gives out negative vibes.

• And since women are “impure” for those 5-7 days, they are not allowed to enter any places of worship during that time (totally ignoring the fact that God had intended women to menstruate). Some temples even ban women in general because there is no way to detect if they are menstruating or not.

• A menstruating woman should not enter the kitchen.
  (Now this could have started out as attempt to allow women to have some rest as it’s not uncommon for women to feel a bit physically weak while menstruating.In the past, cooking involved breaking coal for the fire, getting water from the wells, grinding grains and other physically demanding tasks, so it was indeed a good idea to let a menstruating woman rest instead of doing these arduous tasks.)

• Buying sanitary napkins is seen as an act of shame. You are advised to be as discreet as possible and wrap it in brown paper while bringing it home.

• Indian girls shouldn’t use tampons because it can break their hymen implying that they won’t be a virgin anymore which will harm their marriage prospects.

• A woman on her periods should not touch a jar of pickle 
  (Apparently, we give out “radiations” while menstruating and that can make food go bad – preserved food items like pickle that usually last for months unrefrigerated when left outside in Indian heat, will go off the moment a menstruating woman touches the jar.)

• A woman on her periods shouldn’t wash her hair before her 3rd day. She shouldn’t comb her hair or clip her nails.
  (This one might have dated back to the times when everyone in a village used to bath in village ponds, they would use the same water for cooking, for cleaning their clothes and for bathing their cattle too. So, probably they didn’t want a menstruating woman to go in the water.)

All these taboos make it difficult for girls and women to see menstruation as a natural phenomenon – as one of nature’s most normal rites of passage.

All of these “rules” are so dated that they should have been changed decades ago, however only now have people started to speak out and protest against them.

A couple of months ago when Prayar Goplakrishnan, president of the managing body of Sabarimala temple in Kerala, made a public statement that he would allow women to enter a certain temple only if there is a scanner for purity – you know like one of those metal detectors at the airport, only this one would check if a woman is menstruating – there was a huge outcry in India that spread like a wildfire through the social media channels and gave rise to the “#HappyToBleed” campaign led by Nikita Azad.

Not just in Hinduism, the sad truth is that most religions of the world except Sikhism consider menstruating women unclean.

What I don’t understand is why is it so disgusting when that is how babies are born? That is how all of us were born – even the temple chief – if his mother wouldn’t have been impure every month, he wouldn’t have existed at all.

I am very interested to know about the taboos and rituals that your community tells you to follow during menstruation. Let us know in the comment section below.

*Untouchable: 

(Oxford Dictionary) A member of the lowest-caste Hindu group or a person outside the caste system, contact with whom is traditionally held to defile members of higher castes.

This Indian art/design agency shows illustrates the most popular taboos in India relating to menstruation in a light hearted way