Hey, There’s Blood On Your Skirt
A memoir about menstruation and period stains
Note: All the names have been changed to protect privacy.
Note 2: Menstruation in India is still a taboo topic. There are numerous restrictions forced upon a menstruating woman, various rituals to be followed once a woman attains puberty, shame and embarrassment associated with period stains, and much more.
I was in the 4th grade when I turned all curious about the various sanitary napkin advertisements. I used to question my mum about the ads, to which she replied enigmatically.
But the constant answer was, ‘You’ll come to know when it is the right time.’
My curiosity reached its pinnacle and I went to the extent of rummaging for the sanitary pads inside the cupboard in our bedroom. I used to take them out, touch their surface, and wonder what it was used for. Later, I got a pamphlet from the Kotex packet. I read the pamphlet fully, but I never understood a word of it.
As time passed by, my girlfriends in school began discussing sanitary napkins. I joined their discussion and we concluded that they were used as diapers to control the flow of urine. After a few days, someone told me that blood flows along with the urine and that’s why women use those pads. Once in my music class, I told this to a senior who in turn asked me about the origin of the information. She then gently chided me to stop talking about it. Everyone around me behaved like menstruation was a top Government secret.
Sometime during the 6th grade, one of my friends, Shreenidhi, told me that she had ‘age attended’. I didn’t know what it was, but it was a popular term to refer to girls attaining puberty. It was she who explained what happens to our bodies during menstruation. She told us (my other friends and me) that blood came out of her vagina all of a sudden and her mom gave her a pad to use.
When we all went to the washroom, she showed us her pad and the blood on it. If this sounds gross to you, I can’t help it. But we never felt it to be disgusting. We were shocked that something like this was about to happen to our bodies. That new information startled us.
As soon as I entered 7th grade, I had my first period. I told my mum that I noticed blood on my panty. She then asked me to take a bath and gave me a sanitary pad. The dress which I wore then was discarded and I was given a new set of clothes. Everyone in my family told me that I should stay at home for at least a week. I was terribly upset because I had joined a new school and I had just gone for one day before my period happened.
However, I enjoyed the leave. I was given a separate room with a bed and a computer. Thank God, unlike others, I wasn’t asked to sit inside a bunch of coconut leaves spun by my uncle. My ‘age attended’ news was conveyed to all my kith and kin. Within two days, my cousins arrived and we had a gala time in the bedroom, watching movies on the computer and playing many games. Since I was a bookworm, I also read some Enid Blyton mysteries during those days.
Though my mum did not want to conduct a ‘puberty function’ for me, she still went ahead in arranging the function. The grand function took place in a nearby wedding hall. To the unknown, this is a function that is specifically conducted in South India. A woman who’s got her first period will be dressed in a grand saree with make-up and jewelry. Relatives and friends will attend the function, daub the woman’s forehead and cheeks with sandalwood paste and kumkum, and offer gifts or money.
After the function, I rested for another day and went back to school. Since it was a new experience for me, I blurted to my bench mate that I had ‘age attended’, and then the news spread like wildfire. It was embarrassing because I was told that boys should never know about this and I shouldn’t even interact with boys much. But ‘boys’ had a massive role in noticing bloodstains on my uniform. Let me tell you about those incidents.
I didn’t know that menstruation was a monthly thing. So I didn’t keep track of the date I would get my next period. After playing in the playground during P.T class, I reached my classroom, sat down, and gulped some water. Since it was a Friday, I was wearing an inter-house shirt and a white skirt. As I got up to go to the restroom, two boys, Ahmed and Jacob, called me from the bench behind me.
‘Kavya, there’s blood on your skirt,’ said Ahmed.
‘Hey, Kavya, what happened? Is that blood?’ exclaimed Jacob.
I turned red all over. There was a super-visible stain on my white skirt. Immediately, I brought out a pad from inside my schoolbag (yes, the pad was safely ensconced in a purse) and rushed to the washroom.
Thankfully, my mum had kept one inside my bag and had told me, ‘You’ll need it next month’, but somehow her words had slipped my mind. I was careful the month after that.
Sometime after three months, I returned from the Library class. The boy sitting next to me asked, ‘Did you touch Nisha? If so, don’t touch me.’
I asked him what the matter was. He told me, ‘We boys found Whisper inside her bag. That means we shouldn’t go near her or even accidentally touch anyone who has come in contact with her.’
I asked him, ‘Why the hell did you touch her bag?’
He replied, ‘We were passing by her bag to find Lokesh’s bag and take his lunchbox out. That’s when we saw this.’
Though this conversation did not affect me that day, now I find that it was so sick. I mean, why are we considered impure when we menstruate? What has impurity got to do with a biological process? Wish I could travel back in time and give a piece of my mind to that boy.
Two years later, my English teacher noticed a patch of bloodstain on my grey skirt. It was like a wake-up call for me. From then, whenever I got my period I kept pestering my friends to check my skirt for the first two days, even though I had used a pad.
Three years later, I had an appendectomy (removal of the appendix). As a side-effect of the numerous medicines, my bleeding was heavy the month after the surgery. On the first day, I placed a pad and was getting ready to go to school. Though I felt that the flow was kinda abnormal, I still sat on grandpa’s bike and zoomed off.
When I alighted from the bike and entered my school gate, someone called me from behind. Turning back, I saw my former van driver who used to drop me off in his Maruti Omni. He was beckoning me to come near him. I walked to him with pleasantries ready in my mouth, but he cut me short, ‘There’s blood on your skirt. Please go and check.’
It was the most embarrassing moment of my life at that time. But now I feel that all these staining incidents shouldn’t embarrass us. After all, menstruation is natural and staining is an inevitable thing. Stains always happen despite our best efforts to pad ourselves the right way. The best would be just to ignore the stains; when people ask, we can tell them that we’re having our periods. If they ask us whether we aren’t embarrassed about it, we can then gently ask them to mind their own business.
I think it’s high time people stop tying menstruation to impurity, embarrassment, religion, and anything else. Let us see menstruation as a biological process and let us concentrate on menstrual hygiene instead of laughing at stains, wrapping sanitary-napkin packets in newspapers, asking the woman to stay away from men and religious places, and celebrating her first period like it’s a phenomenal achievement, and many such outrageous things.
Let us spread awareness regarding menstruation and teach boys about what really happens during the process. Let us teach girls about menstruation beforehand, so that they aren’t alarmed during their first period. Let us not skip the chapter on menstruation during biology classes. Let us put a woman with heavy menstrual cramps at ease instead of asking her to shut up and undergo it like a pro. Let us grant menstrual leaves to women who need them.
Thank you for reading my PERIOD story. Every woman has one. You just have to set your inhibitions aside and listen to her.
I’d recommend you all to read A Teacher Saved My Soul: Facebook Let Me Thank Her for Her Keen Eyes 35 Years Later by Lisa Gerard Braun. It’s a hard-hitting memoir about a teacher who understood and supported a student going through a trauma. Lisa’s narration is incredible and I was almost driven to tears while I read it.
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