Now before you assume I speak of the sexual, let me assure you I am merely referring  to the way she sat. Her wide thighs spread apart, printed cotton dresses hiked up beyond the knees, tapping her finger to keep time with the keys, Miss Printer cared a whit for the proprieties of womanhood. If one was writing their lessons at ground level, her mammoth bloomers would greet anyone who bothered to stare (and I was witness to many a curious young boy who did). Back home, lessons in ‘ladylike behavior’ weren’t complete without a reference to the disgrace that was Miss Printer and how a future of single misery awaited me if I didn’t rein in my knees.

Miss Printer has been dead 16 years. A new century has rolled in. At 31, I’m a girl no more and the ‘lady’ tag my grandma worked so zealously on is a grey area. I don whatever garb I please, jeans and pants taking preference over traditional wear. My legs are long and take up space and I don’t usually give a thought to how I sit (I’m sure a star called Nana is cringing somewhere up in the heavens) but occasionally, those words come back to chant in my ears and I find myself hurriedly clicking knees together, adjusting my skirt and feeling just the tiniest bit guilty for letting my ‘good girl’ guard down.

Such is conditioning. And I’m sure it’s been inflicted on many of you too. Do share. I’m curious to know how many women experienced something similar and whether men were at the receiving end of something comparable. Good girl or otherwise, this is one legacy I hope not to perpetuate. The world can do with one less pair of knees posing as Siamese twins.

When women have bad cramps and male colleagues ask them what’s wrong, they’ll inevitably wince and say “nothing”, look guilty and mumble “stomach ache” or lie. Once, in my previous job, a female colleague had such terrible cramps that she had to take half the day off. Luckily, she had a woman boss who knew what was wrong. I remember glancing across the aisle at my taciturn male boss and wondering what I would have done in a similar situation. Because telling a man (gasp!) that you’re not feeling peachy because of…ahem…”the time of month” is just not done.

Changing pads is another ordeal. Women will wait till the men look suitably occupied, look around surreptitiously, then sidle out of their chairs clutching their bags close to them and sneak to the toilet. The attitude and body language is usually one of acute embarrassment. In one company that I worked for, there were no facilities for women to dispose of sanitary napkins. It just hadn’t occurred to the male bosses that this may be required — and the women were too shy to ask!

Then there’s the issue of the Stain — an eventuality that many women live in mortal fear of because it can unleash embarrassment of horrific proportions. And if you get a Stain during an important meeting with the boss or an important client, it may just be professional hara kiri. Not to mention, you’ll be sniggered about for the rest of your days.

On a lighter note, take a look at noted feminist Gloria Steinem’s take on “If Men Could Menstruate”.

To prevent monthly work loss among the powerful, Congress would fund a National Institute of Dysmenorrhea. Doctors would research little about heart attacks, from which men would be hormonally protected, but everything about cramps.

And this,

Street guys would invent slang (“He’s a three-pad man”) and “give fives” on the corner with some exchenge like, “Man you lookin’ good!”

“Yeah, man, I’m on the rag!”

Now, that’s a thought.

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Menstruation is a topic that is very rarely talked about in any public space. Although experienced by a little less than half a billion people in India, any conversation or debate about the same is conducted within the confines of one’s home, more specifically, the bathroom, and only between members of the gender experiencing it. Mothers and daughters. Sisters-in-law. Aunts and nieces. Grandmothers remembering how it was in their day. Most Indian cultures have initiation rituals connected to menarche, with the girl being made aware that her body has changed and there’s no going back. It is considered a matter of joy, this newfound maturity, her entry into the baby-making force of the world. Some girls have older female members of the family explain what their bodies are going through. Others are left to discover it for themselves when they wake up one fine day to find parts of themselves bleeding. But with each individual experience of menarche, a girl knows that something has changed. Irretrievably so. And no matter which way she views herself, the world will look at her differently from now on.

Once the wheel is set in motion, however, very little mind space is accorded to this 28-day occurrence in a woman’s life. Which is fine by most people. I’ll take that any day over snide remarks about PMS and “that time of the month” every time someone wants to blame their stupidity on my hormones. But what I cannot comprehend is the public shame factor attached to a natural bodily process. The embarrassed, subdued tones in which one is expected to ask the shopkeeper for one’s needs. (Thank the Lord for supermarkets now!) And the supposedly respectful way they wrap your fluid-absorption device of choice in a newspaper, assuming you wouldn’t want the world to know you’re a normally functioning woman. With that logic, if I am pregnant, am I to hide the bump so people don’t realize I was sexually active? Is my body going through the natural cycles to cause shame to society? I know people from my mother’s generation who won’t even go up to a chemist and ask for napkins directly. They’ll send household help to do “the deed”. Er…why exactly? Are we too la-di-da to have a normally functioning reproductive system?

Of course, I own up to days when I curse the whole darn mess. And grumble about having to go through the inconvenience of it all. But at the end of the day, it is part of my body. And I refused to be ashamed of the way nature made me. Especially when I have been endowed with the ability to procreate because of it. Whether I choose to have babies in the future is an entirely separate issue. But for now, I will not have my sexuality cloistered under newspaper wrappers because it may offend the world that I am a reproductively healthy woman. So I walk into the corner store, head held high, ask for my usual brand firmly and unhesitatingly say “no, thank you” to the surprised assistant who is all set to secret away my stash. That the product itself is called ‘Whisper’ should tell you something about society’s attitude toward one of the most important human bodily functions we have.

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