My niece got her period last month, for the first time. And her reaction to it was as nonchalant as it could be. She found out early in the morning, told her mom, got it sorted, and then went right back to sleep. While her mom and I sat there, clutching our hair like omg omg omg, unable to process this information.
Are periods really not that big a deal as it used to be? Excuse my boomer talk.
So I grew up in a house full of women, so periods wasn't exactly an alien concept to me. My earliest memories of periods are of my mom lying in a darkened room with a glass bottle of hot water pressed to her tummy, writhing in pain. So yeah, I knew it was going to be an absolute party.
We would never use the word "periods" at the time. It was always "velya kutty aayi". My mom still uses that when any of my cousins attains puberty. Like it's a yardstick. It always confused me as a young kid. I'd look at them and think, they look exactly the same size as before. Later, I deduced that maybe it's code for "started wearing a bra", which then would make sense because then the velya-ness could be indicative of a particular body part.
My mom would later refer to it as "menses" while she was trying to explain it to me, which was just way worse because it now sounded like the name of some tonic.
When the movie Jeans came out, Prasanth referred to it as "women's problem", which my dad thought was hilarious and thereafter started referring to it as "women's problem" which used to annoy the heck out of me. There was also Indrajith from Meesha Madhavan who called it "blood on the moon" which made no sense to me either. What is the moon here? The butt?
Then, of course, there was the "chums" era, brought on by my sister from her college education. She and her friends had a bunch of names for it, though "chums" was the most recognized one, which I continued using even during my college time. My friends and I even started calling ourselves the "Chums Sisters" because all of our calendars synced up this one time. Had a special handshake and everything.
One of my friends started to call it Colocacia, which I found hilarious, so that stuck for a while.
I don't know when it finally came to being called "periods". Maybe when the number of girls in our family doubled. The kids in our family are all aware of periods and how it works and what to do. I was the one who had "the talk" with most of them. I did it very professionally with pictorial slides and everything.
While I wasn't given such a professional presentation or anything about the same, I did have some idea about it by the time I was around 11 or 12.
Growing up with a family of many women, I was always curious as hell about the whole thing. I wanted to know why they would make such a big deal out of buying pads and what were those curious balls of paper in the bathroom every month? But then in solid nineties fashion, no one explained.
My mother did give me a gist of it around my 12th birthday, but somehow, I have barely any memory of it. Maybe because she didn't use slides like me. I do remember my aunt talking to me about it over the phone.. She told me every female species on earth goes through it, even animals..even pigeons. And that's the only thing I remember from that conversation because my mind zoned out and started thinking about pigeons. Bleeding pigeons.
I remember my friends at school started talking about it too. My best friend Neelima had gotten it before me and wouldn't stop gushing about it. While some girls were just dying to cross over into that phase, I really was not. Sure, I was curious, but as per my limited knowledge on the topic, it usually involved horrible, scary stomach aches, hot water bottles, walking funny and paper balls in the bathroom. Nothing appealing there.
I'll never ever forget the day it finally happened for me. It was on a Friday, the 13th. Popularly known as the day of misfortune and bad luck. How poetically ironic.
My father had allowed my sister to go to the movies with her best friend. The movie - Titanic. It was all the rage and everyone in my class, was talking about the naked scenes. Especially Neelima who literally drew me a word picture.
And so I begged my sister to take me along because I had to go see if he did in fact draw her like those French girls.. Also, completely by coincidence, my sister's friend's brother who was the same age as me was supposedly tagging along. Soooo, that was kind of an extra incentive. I had never seen or met or knew anything about the guy, but when you're pre-teen in a girls' school, just the random vicinity of a boy was enough to get the blood pumping.
So we set off, my sister and I, her friend and her brother. I think it was Concorde Cinema, or Mega Mall. I honestly don't remember what her brother looked like or anything. Knowing me, I probably awkwardly gazed at the floor the entire time in order to avoid eye contact. The movie started and I sat next to my sister.
The movie was obviously mindblowing. I forgot all about the brother when Leo came on screen and was instantly and utterly smitten by Jack, as was every other girl that year. The love-making scenes came on and I instinctively had to hold my breath lest anyone near me hear me breathing and think I was enjoying the scene. Which I was not. Obviously. Duh. I mean.. pfft, I felt nothing, of course.
The movie ended. My sister and her friend gushed about how good it was. Me and the brother stared at the floor awkwardly. Soon, we got into a taxi and headed home. I remember standing outside the elevator of our building and suddenly feeling a little.. weird. Yep, that's it, a little weird. Not a punch in the gut like they show in the movies. No flowers bloomed around me. No glass bangles broke, and I did not run away crying dramatically. Sad.
I didn't pay much heed to the weird sensation. I mean, I was a hormonal, almost-teenage girl who just watched a super inappropriate movie. Weird feelings were... common. So, like I said, I didn't really give it much thought.
We got home, and the house was filled with relatives. This was a common thing during most of our weekends back then. We had a group of cousins and uncles and aunts who would all get together each weekend, eat a lot, talk a lot, laugh a lot. I kinda miss those times when we all liked each other.
After a quick greeting, I slipped away to the bathroom to pee. And there I made the grand discovery. Again, no loud background music. I did not scream like I had seen a ghost. I just went *gasp*.. oh. and that's it.
Not wanting to break the news in front of so many people, I decided to hold off telling anyone until everyone had left. But the growing discomfort didn't help. I pulled my sister into my room and I remember standing behind the closed door, whispering, "Um... I think I got it," cryptically but she immediately knew what I was talking about.
My sister's eyes widened and she immediately started freaking out. (You know what's funny? When I found out I was pregnant, pretty much the same scene played out, this same sister being the first one I pulled aside and whispered my big news to. And both times she reacted pretty much the same way.)
I told her we should wait till everyone is gone before telling Amma. She looked at me like I was a stupidhead. Which I probably was.
She immediately told Amma and who then went on to tell every. single. person who had gathered there. And then she was on the phone calling up my other sister in India, my grandparents, aunts, uncles.
I don't remember Acha's reaction. I'm sure it would have been scary for him, the fact that he was now the father of 3 fully matured daughters. Physically matured, I meant. He's probably still waiting on me to develop the mental maturity.
The only plus is that everyone there immediately got me presents - chocolates, money, all of which surely helped alleviate the embarrassment. I even got a few toys, even though I was supposedly "velya kutty" now.
My mom set me up with a pad and insisted that I wear a skirt instead of my shorts. The rest of the evening went on as usual, with all the women comparing their own period stories.
At bedtime, I remember asking my mom, "Ok, so I'm going to sleep now, so I can take this thing off now?" referring to the pad. My mom gave me a "Oh, Honey" look at my dumb 12-year-old logic, that when the body falls asleep, then the uterus also probably falls asleep.
The next day, I went to school and told Neelima that I got "it" (because, like I said, it was still a word that should not be said aloud at that point) and then we giggled and whispered about it. She nearly had a fit when she later caught me running and held me by the shoulder and sternly said "Never ever run when you're on your period." Man, the amount of crap that kids of our generation got filled in our heads.
And from there it began. The looooong journey, month after month after month. I think for the first 10 years or so, every time I got it, I would burst into tears. I'd call my mom crying from the hostel, bewailing my fate of having to use the dirty toilet whilst on my period. Oh, the horror.
I would cry everytime it would turn up the day before I'd have to travel. I remember lying on the bed, bawling my eyes out, proclaiming that my entire life had been ruined because I got it the day before my sister's wedding, where I was supposed to wear white.
I remember going to surprise a boy on his birthday, dressed completely in white on the first day of my period and coming back half red. Probably traumatized him as well.
As I got older, the crying stopped and it was more of "ugh, nobody touch me. And no one please expect anything of me as I lay motionless like a piece of furniture, crying over random reels for the next three days. I know, I know, how dramatic.
Kids these days are so cool about it. My niece got her period the day before her school trip and she was like Hmm, oh well. Oh well?? And the newly converted niece, she refuses to talk to anyone about it at all. Why wouldn't you want to cry and crib and whine and be dramatic and share the agony with everyone else?
As my daughter D gets closer and closer to her P-day, I'm starting to get heartburn. She knows all that there is to know. We've had all the talks. I managed to not traumatize her with my presentation. She has a lot of questions from time to time. Sometimes I feel I should make it sound so so so very horrible and oversell it so that when she does experience it, she'll be like meh, it's not that bad.
But for the most part, I've been trying very hard to make it seem like a non-life-ruining thing for her. I don't know if I'm doing a great job at it. Maybe I should tell her about the pigeon.
