I was just browsing through the racks, running my eyes over scores of books figuring out which one I’d like to buy, and then this title caught my eye. Reading that book was perhaps one of the most defining moments of my life. I got it at the Scholastic Book Fair held annually at my school in Aligarh. I was 13- in the 9 th standard at school- when I read this book called Girls Speak Out by Andrea Johnston. I don’t mean for the Twitter-Instagram metro-dweller high-life set but the small town, Aligarh-Allahabad-Muzaffarnagar-what-have-you kinds of societies where even pregnancy is something to be embarrassed of, let alone discussing your period (collective gasp of scandalised aunties!) But you can’t have a womanhood blog and be completely silent about this major, defining part of what it means to be a woman. But talking about menstruation isn’t easy. Going ahead with it wasn’t an easy decision, even though as a friend once remarked, “You’ve owned up to much bigger things in there.” True, that. I have been contemplating this post for many months now, writing and deleting and rewriting. (And very specific background scores for every villain in my life, too -echoing full volume in the corridors of my mind every time a villain appears.) Yes, I have background scores for almost every moment in my life: the funny, the romantic, the dramatic. It’s like a background score that keeps playing when someone speaks of that time of the month-or whenever it brings the blues with it. One of the first movies Sajjad and I watched in a theatre after we got hitched was No Strings Attached-you know, the Ashton Kutcher- Natalie Portman rom-com that’s the cutest thing to watch - I mean who can ever forget that ‘period mix’? One of my favourite dialogues from the movie is the one quoted above, spoken by Guy who ‘isn’t even a woman’, and my favourite scene the one where Adam and Emma sit on the bed with “keep bleeding, I keep, keep bleeding love” playing in the background.įrom that movie onward, Keep Bleeding Love became a subconscious period-anthem for me-forevermore.
Guy: “I love it when we’re all on the same cycle, we all get to be passive-aggressive and fight.”
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