Nishtha Shrestha

A young girl sits alone as her cousins celebrate with gifts. A woman is preparing garlands for the evening worship. The context behind these scenarios is: two different experiences of the same girl who was menstruating during a festival. This change took over 10 years, a timeframe within which the girl was reminded of the humiliation every year. Many girls and women must have stayed away this year as well to avoid spoiling the celebration. The question to ask ourselves then is how fair is it to exclude girls based on a natural phenomenon similar to breathing. 

When analysing this common occurrence in our household from various perspectives, each question is sure to make us realise the absurdity of this practice. From a religious point of view, the standard line we hear is all things on Earth are created by God. By this logic even menstruation is a work of God. Hence, aren't we disrespecting God every time we exclude women? Also, aren't we labelling his creation as impure as we believe menstruation makes women impure?

The practice of worshipping the body during Tihar is common to a particular cultural group in Nepal. The irony in this case is that we are praying for the good health of the body while simultaneously rejecting the phenomena that is responsible for its creation. Is it a complete celebration when we prevent women to fully accept their bodily functions? Why is there a distinction of good and bad between the processes of the same body?

It is easy to ask a girl or a woman to skip functions when they are on their periods. Some protest while many follow to avoid conflicts during happy moments of the family. Who then is to be held responsible for the shame, guilt and frustrations experienced in the aftermath? For a young teenager, the first period is a difficult moment. Why do we need to add these unnecessary societal emotions on the already overburdened teenager who is learning how to be hygienic and deal with the hormonal changes? Humans feel pain when they are ignored so one can only imagine the level of psychological harm inflicted when this is repeated every month. This is a subtle form of torture and from the hands of the loved ones.

There is no dearth of awareness programmes for menstruation. While the restrictions are less in certain households, the orthodox thoughts automatically become active during a religious gathering. This also holds true for educated households which continue to be ignored by the awareness campaigns. How then do we expect young girls to learn to love themselves when every month they are made to feel unlucky for no fault of theirs? The change is possible as evident in the scenario above. It will take time but it can be done. And if you are able to bring about this change, the little girl in your household will always be grateful for teaching her to accept her body and enjoy the changes without any pressure.