Period (BH:D216)

March 5, 2012

Woke up this morning, a little later than usual, to the wonderful news of a little lady's coming of age or as Courtney Cox had put it succinctly on American television in 1985, "period".

The social attitude towards women's periods have undergone such tremendous change during the last three decades. In what seems like an ancient era, I remember, in the 80s, the two or three days in every month when Amma slept separately. The Malayalam words that are lost in English translation as "untouchable" or "unclean" were used to describe the strange phenomenon then. Since she was a working mom with two kids and no servants, the stricter ban from the kitchen that I have heard about in other homes was never observed in ours. 

In school, a few years down the lane, periods became the secret boy explanation for almost all strange girl behavior. Movies in those times used this natural, universal and life affirming phenomenon as fuel for rather crude jokes. Sylvester Stallone lend himself to many jokes by titling a movie: First Blood!

I remember the day my sister got hers. It was an evening. Amma called me to the kitchen, gave me some money and told me to go buy a few things from the shop near the temple. Since it was a rather strange list of things in small quantities and since she looked uncontrollably happy, I asked what was going on. She told me that my sister had become a woman. I was 13-14 at that time and understood. I remember walking to the shop with a distinct sense of elevation and responsibility at being a brother. By the time I was back our grandmother, Achan's Amma, had already reached home with our aunty. After I delivered the things from the shopping list, I was banished to a distance while this team of women engaged themselves in hushed conversations of camaraderie and pride. The edible ingredients I had bought were mixed and fed to my sister; the lingering remnants of what might once have been very elaborate ceremonies to celebrate the event. 

In one of my all time favorite books, Dr. Leonard Shlain's "Sex, Time and Power", he theorizes that origins of civilization is in blood. Not the blood shed in tribal wars, but the periodic feminine bodily function that Dr. Shlain says was responsible for creating an awareness of periodicity, and hence time, in the evolving human minds. It wasn't by looking at the changing moon or the shifting tides, but by the physiological change in a fellow being, with the inescapable starkness of red, that man began to comprehend repetitions and seasonality. No surprise that the oldest of deities across the globe were always women. Mother Goddess, indeed! Mothers of time!

As a young man with girlfriends, periods did occasionally transform into 'excuses' and buzz kill. If one subscribes to the theories of ever changing chemical compositions of the female brain (like those from Dr. Louann Brizendine) then periods become something to watch out for at least from the male p.o.v. The popularity of such theories is evident from the several mobile apps floating around that help track your wife's or girlfriends' periods. 

In the recent Selvaraghavan-Dhanush movie, "Mayakkam Enna", in one of the songs, as the hero snuggles up to the heroine in bed, she pushes him away and shows him a packet of sanitary napkins. At least in movies, we have come a long way from the crude jokes. Plenty of Tamil movies set in villages dedicate scenes or segments in songs to feature elaborate rituals and celebrations that mark the occasion. One of the recent hits, Mynaa, had an unforgettable sequence tied to the heroine's first period.

In 2006, I helped put together the American adaptation of Sue Townsend's Great Celestial Cow for the Aggie Players under the guidance of Dr. Michael Greenwald at Texas A&M. The drama deals with the life of women immigrants. It is very common to see Indian immigrants become more religiously conservative once they start to make a living in the West. In a scene that comes right before the intermission of the play, Bibi, the daughter of the protagonist Sita, gets her first period. Sita's mother-in-law and aunty, furiously object to such a "bleeding" girl visiting the temple to celebrate Navaratri. Sita boldly asks them, "Our goddess never bled?"

The play was performed at the intimate 150-seater Rudder forum on campus. Under the stadium seating section, there is a passageway which we used as actors to hide between our entrances. While sitting there, along with the sound of the play, we could also hear the creaking of the chairs as the audience shifted above us. In the 10 full house shows we had, whenever we had a predominantly Indian audience, the creaking of the chairs became very loud when the "period" played out with Chaitra Rao delivering the brilliant lines forcefully. 

The goddess at the Chengannur (from Cheng+kunnu=red hill) temple in Kerala, according to legend, had monthly periods for a long time till the original idol was destroyed in a fire. In fact the temple is supposed to stand in a spot where goddess Parvati, wife of Shiva, got her first period after their marriage. The story goes that thousands of years later, when a low caste "Kurathi" woman was sharpening her knife on a stone, the stone started bleeding and the learned folks of the land recognized the divine presence in the area. In our times, I think it is fair to say that the South Park episode with the bleeding Virgin Mary statue was nothing short of legendary!

During the brief and harmless ragging season at IIT-B in 1996, one of my fellow freshmen got a hard time for blurting out that he regularly "missed periods" while in school. He was asked to take a pregnancy test soon.

I can't think of a better capture of the geeky male attitude towards periods than the hilarious episode of the IT Crowd series titled "Aunt Irma Visits." In a superb two minute exchange in the episode, an amazing list of euphemisms are mentioned starting with the common "time of the month" to "high tide" and "closed for maintenance" to the brilliant, "I've fallen to the communists!" It is only when "the first scene of Carrie" is invoked that Moss, the endearing encapsulation of 21st century geekiness, understands the matter. I am pretty sure all couples with or without a sense of humor have their own euphemisms. 

Few years ago, when I mentioned my sister's first day to an American lady friend, she became emotional. She said it was so beautiful that this grand transformation in a woman's life had a ritual ceremony, although small, associated with it. In her case, in the 70s USA, her mom had simply taken her to the grocery store and told her where to find sanitary napkins. 

During this morning's walk, saw that a golden shower cassia in Jawaharnagar Colony has flowered. Glorious golden yellow cluster of flowers. The tree gets to go through this magnificent transformation only once a year. The women around us flower every month.Since I am hung over from reading Dr. Azhikode's commentary on the Upanishads, here are a thousand humble prostrations and salutations to the mothers and daughters of the world...and much avuncular affection to that new entrant of the blessed club.