My dear students, family, friends, colleagues and well-wishers,
Here is an un-usual piece about a common essential of personal daily life, which is at the same time intimate and public.
Mayuri Joshi-Dhavale is from my Class of 1999, SIMC; with her fellow-students Madhura Majumdar-Mandal, Daisy Borah and Anu Chitnis.
Mayuri says: “I’ve thought deep and hard, before posting this intimate account of a personal topic that is considered a taboo to talk about today. I write because it’s important to talk about it. If it reaches your heart, please support the #padssquad initiative to ensure that we reach sanitary pads to the women who can’t afford it.
---------------------------------
By Mayuri Joshi-Dhavale
The day I started menstruating was a day of celebration for me.
“It” arrived in my life so fashionably late that I had started questioning myself if I was in fact actually a girl! Every girl in my class had started their periods between the 6th and 8th standards. I was in the 10th. And yet no sight of the damn thing for me.
I felt it was ages ago that I had attended a seminar in school on menstrual health and hygiene and I had come back home with my very own packet of pads; so excited to become a lady and to start using something that is just for us. It made me feel “special” to have & use these pads. Most women in India were still on cloth. Just how special, I realised much later …
My turn was just not coming. Being skinny in frame, I hardly looked like a girl. Added to that, being a total tomboy didn’t help. Often, I was the butt of jokes. I waited for “its arrival” patiently, despite being told “it” is painful, “it” is discomforting; “it” changes your life for good. But when “it arrived” in the last quarter of my 10th standard, I celebrated. And that was also the last time, I ever gave “it” a thought.
The next time I thought about “it” was when I missed my period and found out I was pregnant. Once again the feeling associated with “it” was only joy. This time though for “not” having “it” …
Because in return I was getting a baby. Nothing could be better.
For me, menstruation was never a challenge. Never did I suffer any pain; always had the money to buy what I needed. Pads were a joke in our family of one man and four women: That all of my Dad’s salary went into buying sanitary napkins for one woman every week. My home was safe and the atmosphere was liberal: we spoke freely about women’s issues.
The first time I realized the seriousness of “it” was when we visited a family friend. I stained the bed and my Mom and Dad were much embarrassed and spent the next few hours cleaning it. I would always wonder: What’s the big deal? Would they be as embarrassed, I wondered, if I bled from my knee? Strangely, my heart was always a rebel and I only felt proud to be a part of the circle of women I was such a late entrant to. Now everyone knew; and that was strangely comforting.
The second and the last time I stained my clothes was when I was in the 12th standard. It was the annual sports day, so I was wearing an all-white uniform and I didn't realize I had stained my uniform. My classmate, a boy, came up to me and told me about it, as he walked me home. He covered me like a shield. He was shocked that I was not embarrassed by it. To my dismay, I remained the talk of the school for the next few weeks. All in all, I had totally, completely embraced “it” and I was fortunate to have been born in an environment where the treatment towards me did not change, because I was having my periods.
And then Covid-19 happened …
Years passed and I did not give “it” much thought until … Covid-19 happened. By fate, I was pulled into relief work. Starting with giving out rations, I went on to helping migrants to get back home. During this pandemic, I became a part of Padsquad, a movement of 40 pad-squadders working relentlessly in 21 cities to ensure that sanitary pads reach the poor & needy. A few drives and multiple discussions later, I have now been exposed to the reality of women’s health and hygiene in India, as it stands today.Women remain the last priority: sanitary napkins are a luxury, menstrual cups a faraway dream.
Village women are treated as outcasts during those days and are not allowed to touch anything, lest it get contaminated. Many women in India use straw, grass or cow-dung in place of cloth or pads. With no water to drink, where is the water to wash cloth-pads? Since food is a priority, sanitary napkins are a luxury. On that front, the women think like the government, which treats sanitary pads as a luxury item and not an essential commodity.
Women suffer silently with UTI, due to poor sanitary conditions and lack of good clean cloth or sanitary pads. Malnutrition leads to excess bleeding and painful periods. PCOD goes undetected. Young un-married girls conceive, because no one told them about the connection between menstruation and pregnancy. Girls get married as soon as their periods start. They bear many children, because the husbands refuse to fix themselves and the women have no money for contraceptives or pills.
Now I realize that mere distribution of sanitary napkins is not enough. For now, reaching sanitary pads is the urgent need. How can it be that the same pads, which made me feel so special, are differently special for other women, who have no access to pads?
What is a privilege needs to be treated as a basic right and need.
Is this an issue about gender, class, culture, education? Or is the whole health-care system broken? Religion? The absence of a progressive mind? Or just a biological issue that was taken for granted as a way of life and thus ignored?
So I ask: If the men bled like women do every month, would pads still be seen as a luxury or a need?
---------------------------------
If Mayuri's piece reaches your heart, please support the #padssquad initiative to ensure that we reach sanitary pads to the women who can’t afford it.
Her email address: <mayuridhavale@hotmail.com>
Your support is my strength.
Peace and love,
~ Joe Pinto, Saturday, 10 October 2020, Pune.
No comments:
Post a Comment