Customarily Angry

 This thought has been triggered by a friend when she wrote about being angry on cruelty towards animals. Don't know how this thought, though primarily its not a thought but an emotion that has stayed and grown, has surfaced after long. No resemblance to the event shared by my friend but the weridness of human mind can't be defined. It leads to memories and emotions when not required and then begins the turmoil. Again in the same essay my friend pens that write it out if you are angry-it's cathartic!!! 

   So I'm angry. Not actually now but years before the distress began. Brought up by educated but conservative parents, childhood was more about don'ts as a girl child. Definitely there were dos like ' Do your homework regularly ', 'Do correct your posture while sitting ', 'Do respect your elders',  'Do consider for people eating after you' and so on. Among these dos came a huge DON'T of my puberty. As soon as the flow began, came the unwanted, unwelcomed DON'Ts.  'Don't pray in those days',  'Don't dance much about in those days', 'Don't wear light frocks', 'Don't wear jeans', ' Don't celebrate festivals '...   Luckily I was not told 'Don't live for those days'. Though said or not it imbibed the same. 

     Hormones already brought myriad of emotions with them to these added agony were the Age Old Customs. I never understood what made me angry in those days-Hormones or Customs?  So I was declared a Customarily Angry Teenager. Expressing anger again in those days was considered  a sign of a badly raised child. Which I was not. So to the best of my abilities, I started accepting those customs of those days as a part of life. Now this part was not happily accepted and it remained with me like a dirty mole you want to get rid of but can't. It's just their on your face and you have to face the fact that you got to live with it.!

      My parents though custom bound were strong believers of education so they gave me best of education to be transformed into a doctor. Those days now became part of normal days of running, learning, experimenting but still the DON'T stayed. Suddenly one day, fate wanted to have its way other way. A dark red patch appeared on my White Apron during a practical. Now this white apron is customarily to be worn by science students in the lab. It just doesn't understand the science of society of not wearing whites on Those Days. There were these hush hush whispers going rounds in the chemistry lab with the  titration rounds. People failed to get that perfect pink in their flask but didn't fail to remark on my red mark. I was escorted to the girls' common room by my lab teacher who worked as a sheild to cover my red marks. So relieved I was thinking her to be my saviour only to find the other side. 

 " Aparna, always have a pad two to three days before your date. Mark your date well. It is embarrassing when such things happen in public. " Couldn't believe a science teacher and a female herself had spoken this testament. How is that my blood boils your blood?  How is that one woman fails to understand other? Again the turmoil of questions which were suppressed for a better tomorrow. 

After those four days, along with the pad the thoughts too went to bin. But they kept having encounters with me in my biology class and later my gynaec lectures. Those days are capable of giving life. No life perpetuates if I don't have those days. The world comes to an end if all the estrogens stopped shedding the uterine linnings. With these thoughts I became a rebel. There is no one stopping me from going to the temple. There is no one stopping me from worshipping the Saraswati who herself adorns white all days of her life. When thoughts changed, I had friends who welcomed me to Ganpati pooja with menstruating vagina. When thoughts changed, I had partner who welcomed me to his house on a menstruating day. No pills. No poastpone, prepone became the mantra of my life. 

 Years later today this anger has found peace with the pieces shed by the uterus. No shame. No hush hush about mensturation. In a practice of 12yrs never written a hormonal combination for menstrual cycle change. As a doctor I have one strong DON'T  to all my female patients. Don't use any pills for prepone or postpone. Go with the natural follow. And if anyone questions you, then  question their birth, their survival. 

Thank you Swetha Amit for I brought this in words something practised only in actions!!!