A red stain: shocked into womanhood
tutorial: how to tell the world you got your first period before you know yourself
A short answer would be to be born into a South Indian household.
It all began with a phone call. (Well, in all honestly, it began when my ancestors thought guerilla marketing was essential to announce that my body could newly produce more colours than the foundational two. But let’s not go that far into Indian history.) Nothing in the day hinted that it would be anything out of the normal. Wearing my cute little uniform skirt, I was casually walking back to class with my friends after my school prayer. I only sniffed out the trouble when my mother had forcefully come to pick me up in the middle of my school day. Little did I know that my innocent skirt bore the secret red one-way ticket to womanhood: a period stain.
I didn’t even know till then. But all my relatives and family friends already did. As a 5th grader, I was surprised that my body could leak in more colours than yellow and brown but shocked that amma (‘mother’ in my native tongue Tamil) had called appa (father), thatha-paati (grandparents), and the rest of her contact list to share this news. Before I could grasp what was happening, I found myself in a traditional silk pavadai dhavani (a South Indian two-piece saree) adorned with gold ornaments and courted by my relatives and family friends, all of whom had abandoned their immediate work to attend my coming-of-age ceremony. Seated on a wooden plank in front of our pooja cabinet, I was having sandalwood paste applied on my cheeks, which were flushed with embarrassment by the married women with everyone showering me with flowers. There was nothing I wouldn’t have done to get out of there to crawl into bed and lie in amma’s hands. Barely an hour into ‘womanhood’ and I was already tired of it.
Puzzled by the absurdness of this ceremony, I later asked amma the significance of the pooja and no, it wasn’t to celebrate the wonders of womanhood. Instead, it was to announce that the girl was ready to marry and capable of bearing children: marketing to the eligible men around that there is something in store for them.
Fun Fact: I’m 18 and very much haven’t been married
To have partaken in such a religious ceremony did not please me, but worse still was the pride gleaming in pati’s eyes when she had blessed me with a successful marriage; a pride that was absent when I topped math class or won a Carnatic music competition or for anything else I earned. It hurt me to witness this, but it also revealed how my religion was being mobilized to perpetuate the oppression of women. Suddenly, my identities as a Hindu (one of the many Indian religions) girl and a free one were in conflict.
Honestly, growing up in the deeply patriarchal society of India really makes you look at things differently. I felt privileged and marginalised. If I say every other girl I know didn’t have a similar story rooted in patriarchal narratives, I’d be lying. Doesn’t this invalidate my own? If we all shared a collective experience, why was I the only one who saw the problem? In all honestly, I was better off than most of my friends. I was still allowed to wear shorts at home, allowed to do sports, and allowed to pursue my interests. While my friends weren’t allowed these little ‘privileges’, I felt guilty to explore why I had to use the word ‘allowed’. I kept comparing things back to my brother instead of my friends. I couldn’t go play cricket on the nearby ground, couldn’t go out of my house alone much, or couldn’t really just do things without examining how many men are going to be there. Except, in a world where the everyday newspaper has you wondering if you’re next to be raped or harassed, I know for a fact that I can’t blame my parents. I blame the way things just are. Well, so much for womanhood I guess.
