“The first time I got my periods, I thought it was a disease and that I was going to die.

Nobody had told me about periods before. It was never taught to us in school and neither did my parents discuss it at home.

I locked myself in a washroom and bawled my eyes out. The pain was excruciating. I felt giddy, uncomfortable and most of all, unprepared.

When my grandmother heard me crying, I was afraid to tell her. Once she found out why, she simply handed me a piece of cloth and asked me to place it on my underwear. That’s it. No explanation. No reasoning. No questions answered.

The prospect of wearing a cloth made me feel uneasy and I refused to do it. After much adamance, I was handed a sanitary napkin by my aunt, who works in the production team of Myna Mahila Foundation (a social enterprise that works for menstrual hygiene for women in Mumbai’s slums).

My aunt and uncle told me everything I needed to know about periods. They spoke to me like my friends. They encouraged me to eat vegetables, go for a walk, drink juice and consume more protein whenever I feel down.
In the place I come from, no woman ever says that she is ‘on her period’. Instead, they say things like ‘she has become impure’ or ‘she is untouchable’. In my case, my mother was told that her daughter has ‘grown up’.