Open Letter - 6

Dear Society,

How are you doing? I am getting tired of beginning every letter with the same greetings but there seems to be no other way out. You have set certain standards for letter writing and who am I to deviate from them? Certainly, I do not want to be isolated from others! Of course every individual across the globe is right now being isolated but I still do not want to be isolated in an isolated world.

Well, this word is repeating quite a number of times but I do not have a possible alternative for it and so you have to bear with me. Isolation, the word that is doing rounds across the world might be a new entrant to our everyday parlance but not so new to our everyday lifestyle.

 You know that I am used to being set aloof, left to live an isolated and degraded life, treated as an untouchable and left shelter-less on few unavoidable occasions. Those five days every month I get pushed into isolation are exactly like the one we are all advised to follow in these testing times.

For example, I get my food in my room but I am not supposed to venture into other rooms.

I may be suffering from cramps and I may even bleed to death but the doors of our prayer room would not open for me. Because, the Goddess might get offended that I, a menstruating woman, am defiling her sacred abode. I sometimes wonder what protocol the Goddess might follow during her periods. May be she voluntarily isolates herself from her devotees.

Dear Society, to pray or not to pray is my choice, but to barricade me from entering a place every other person is allowed to is definitely against my rights.

Menstruation, according to you, is a sin that women commit, the punishment for which is to live the life of an outcast throughout the period. Sometimes, at few holy places, for a lifetime. We are supposed to keep our pain a secret but an invisible no-entry board greets us at every wedding hall, temple gate and kitchen we come across. We are taught to feel ashamed to openly carry a napkin and walk out of a classroom. We are taught to talk in hushed tones when it comes to menstrual issues. To find a red dustbin at a public toilet is a dream unfulfilled for many Indian women.

Five days a month might sound negligible to you but a basic calculation would tell you that for two whole months every year, women are made to live in isolation to be treated like untouchables and sometimes it occurs to me as criminals. If we can say that women are leading a life of second class citizens in the country, then women in periods are leading a life further down the latter.

Whenever I hear untouchability is a crime in India, I keep wondering if that does not refer to domestic desolation that is still in vogue in Indian families towards women during menstruation. Maybe, laws are meant for men and women, not for menstruating women. Because when in periods, women cease to exist to their surroundings. They get along their lives in a dark corner of the house and finally when they are rid of the impure touch of menstruation they walk out bold and energised.

Dear society, you are worried that this imposed lockdown might push people to depression and panic. Then why haven’t you ever worried for a lonely girl of twelve left to sleep under a staircase ailing with cramps but no chance for a soothing touch of her mother just because she is bleeding for the continuation of human race?

Please think over my words and try to make some amendments to your rigid yet unwritten constitution for menstruating women. Because, if I were to give birth to a girl, she is absolutely not following your guidelines of seclusion and desolation.

Yours sincerely,

An Expecting Mother.