Menstrual Hygiene Day, 2017

Hey Peeps! 

I'm Arushi, a 15 year old Girl who loves reading and writing, but also bleeds through her genitals each month. 28th May, yesterday, was celebrated as Menstrual Hygiene Day in India. I came across an extremely inspiring poem by Aranya Johar on Facebook, which gave me the idea for this blog post. Let's start talking about the 'monthly blood'.

Enjoy, and please don't cringe. ;)

P.s. A special thank you to a very special person, my dad. He had always been open discussing "taboo' matters with me and always answered my queries and encouraged questions. In fact, i had been in two minds about uploading this blog, but he was the one who gave me confidence to put it up. Thank you Papa! :)

A Period Story.

Chooo! That was the screech of the train, signalling it had arrived. I was so excited. It was the first time we were travelling without adult supervision. I and My older siblings, 15 year old sister and almost 17 year old brother were taking a chair car to travel to our ancestral home.

It was a long, monotonous 11 hour journey. My initial excitement soon, died down. My elder sister had dozed off, and I soon found my eyes dropping. An excoriating pain in my abdomen awoke me. Instinct-ly, I got up and started heading towards the washroom, when I heard – “Ava, Come here.” It was my sister. Just hoping that I had not stained my favourite jeans with blood, and the whole chair car hadn’t noticed it, I went to my sister.

Sure Enough, I was told that I had a big red stain at the back, which distinctly stood out on the backdrop of light blue jeans. Handing me a sweater to tie around my waist, My sister handed me my sanitary pads or um.. emergency supplies. I rushed to the rest room, did the needful and then it striked to me that even my brother must have noticed my stains. Awkwardly, I returned to my seat, which was next to my brothers. Expecting eerie silence, i kept mum, but my brother cheerfully asked me how i was feeling, while passing me a pain-killer. I just swallowed the medicine, and thinking how privileged i was to be born in such an open household I fell asleep.

Soon, we reached our destination. We unloaded our luggage and found uncle, who had brought and old rusty Maruti 800 to pick us up. On our way, we say beautiful fields, greenery, bullocks and many happy children playing about. Our house was huge, even by the ancestral home standards. At the door, my Aunt and her help, a young girl, named Aarti welcomed us.

After pleasantries, a welcome dinner and freshening up, it was time to unpack. While we were bustling about the house, stashing away our things in proper places, I bumped into Aarti. It looked as if she was in hurry and had a dirty dishcloth in her possession. In the frantic attempt to hide the cloth, she dropped it. It was covered in a red fluid- blood. It took me a few moments to understand that she had been using that unhygienic piece of dust-cloth to maintain hygiene during that time of the month, when Aunt Flo came to visit. Before I could say or do anything, Aarti rushed away. Making up my mind to tackle her later, I continued unpacking.

This incident slipped out of my mind, till midnight, when I heard Aarti moaning. I knocked on her door, but there was no response. So, I barged in. I noticed that Aarti was holding her crotch and crying. Seeing the probability of a possible infection, I called out for grown-ups. As my Uncle, Aunt and Siblings entered the room, she felt shy to talk about her problems. Though my Uncle looked a little uncomfortable, an exchange of looks between Aunt and Uncle, proved that we needed to call a specialised doctor immediately.

Luckily, the next town, a mere 3 km drive, had a Gynocologist, who happened to be a friend of Uncle. He immediately agreed to check Aarti. On examination, it was diagnosed that Aarti had an infection in her genitals and was put on medications. Sadly, the medicines and proper sanitary napkins were very expensive. Aarti could not afford to buy them on her own, and was very shy to confess this problem to her brother, her only alive family member, who worked as an errand boy to the landlord. She herself couldn’t understand what was wrong with her body.

My Uncle paid for the immediate medicines and a stock of Pads and tampons for her, but Aarti knew in the wrong run, she herself would have to support hygiene products. But how was that possible? She couldn’t even ask someone for help, because the mere utterance of the word ‘period’ made people cringe.

I just couldn’t bear to see this plight of hers, and thought of how I, being without financial Aid, could help her. Then I realized, just discussing about this topic openly around people and propagating proper and right usage could perhaps help her and other women come out of their shells and discuss their problems and could make men be more comfortable discussing this problem faced by half of world’s population (Well almost half).


DISCLAIMER

I'm not saying that every person, irrespective of gender  is ignorant towards menstruation, I am just asking women to talk more openly about it and Men to understand that this is not a girl-secret they should discuss about. Periods are as natural as breathing, so lets not hush our questions.

Please do check out my last story here and other social media

Instagram: arushii_133

Facebook: Arushi Bajoria

You can follow certain campaigns/ awareness programs related to #mhday and general period hygiene like:
http://heeals.org/entries/current-activity/campaign-to-provide-water-sanitation-and-menstrual-hygiene-awareness-to-indian-girls-and-children- 

http://wash-united.org/our-work/issues/menstrual-hygiene-management/articles/our-work-issues-menstrual-hygiene-management

REMEMBER: PERIODS is not a stigma, but Ignorance towards it is.