“Form separate line girls, especially from 6th to 8th grade”, my English teacher shouted as I was about to go for lunch along with other boys and girls of my class. We were taken to a room where other didis were already sitting. Since I was a curious soul, I asked my friends, “What exactly is going on, I don’t get it?” All my friends were as blank as I was so we just waited for the suspense to be revealed.
As all the girls were gathered and attendance was being taken, a new face came in front of us and introduced herself as the ‘Health and Hygiene instructor’. She was a young woman in her twenties with short hair tied tightly in a ponytail. Her words were clear and loud, and her sharp communication skill could easily influence the audience. She started by greeting all of us and then talking about adolescence.
At first, I assumed our principal must have hired her as a new subject teacher, but then, something she said charged my brain. She used the term ‘period, aka menstruation’. To be very frank, I had never heard this word in my life before. My eyes got wider when I listened to her until the end.
At first, I thought, “I must have perceived something wrong”, “how can we girls bleed each month and still be alive”, “technically it’s not possible”. I denied it because I was scared. I even asked my female friends about it just to cross-check the matter. Some of them were hesitating, while others were questioning along with me.
After various attempts, two of my friends revealed everything about the menstrual cycle, sanitary pads, and it’s process and duration. The truth hit me as if I finally knew the secret of the universe (I already mentioned how curious and imaginative I was back then).
I was able to visualise it, but nothing was clear to me at all. Things got confusing for me, and I genuinely wanted my mother to guide and inform me about such an important event in a female’s life.
Two years later, I reached home and was about to use the washroom—I took my panties off. At that moment, what I saw left me cold feet. Something was there on my panty. It was reddish-black, but not blood as it was not in liquid form. I spotted some dried blood on my panty, which left me petrified. I ran to my mother weeping. She got hold of me, and then I told her the whole story about my washroom incident.
She insisted, “Abeer, take me with you. I want to take a look at that spot right now.” I showed her the horrific sight. She asked me to relax and pretended to be on a fake phone call to her gynaecologist friend Dr Rekha. As I was always good at reading expression, I figured out that it’s clearly my period blood—otherwise my mother would have panicked as well.
I waited for her to utter the truth about periods—as I had been eagerly waiting for this day to come when my mother would open up about such an important issue.“Abeer, listen to me. This is called a period and a female bleeds every month. To contain the bleeding, always keep a pad or two in your bag for an emergency,” she said.
She also added, “you have to follow some do’s and don’t of periods strictly”, and then, I was introduced to different beliefs in my culture. I confessed that I already knew about periods and stuff. With raised brows, she questioned me, “This was all a drama?” No, no, no, no, how could I have faked my tears?
Actually, I expected it to be like normal blood flow, but it was something else. She laughed and said “No Abeer, that’s not how it is. Don’t worry. It is common in many of the girls when they experience periods for the first time.”