Blood, Sweat, Tears
Photo: Karan Madhok
Fiction: ‘“My friends say this is dirty blood,” she said. “That’s why nobody talks about it, not even our mothers. Not even when there is pain. My mother says not to eat this and that, says I have to be careful now, dress modestly, not talk to boys.”’
The slum had sprouted several legs and, despite tottering under piles of garbage, it chased me with evil intent, until I finally ended up in the nullah that drained its grey unmoving waters.
A nightmare, no ordinary dream.
It must have occurred on the fourth day of our survey on menstrual health management among slum dwellers, and seemed prophetic in pronouncing to me the irrelevance of our efforts. What management? There was no piped water supply; water, instead, had to be bought from tankers for which women and girls queued up for varying hours. There was just one home toilet, and a few public and community toilet complexes where water supply was unpredictable, indifferent to cleanliness. The slum dwellers reported that what bothered them most was not the stench but the mosquitoes. There were swarms that hovered over storm water drains and inside homes, where table fans on varying surfaces whirred as noisily as the insects.
I recalled that my nightmare had stench, for stench had never left my nostrils after every exhausting day of the survey.
In my mind, there were also two faces that I found difficult to shed: Leela whose age I checked was 16, and Pratibha, aged 14. Having adopted us, one or both would accompany us through the narrow lanes of the slum. They had spotted us early, stumbling around the open and narrow spaces in confusion, and had come to our aid.
My first respondent had been a woman who was rolling rotis at dusk in an open space, using wood pieces to heat the tawa on a clay stove. I waited under a tree till she finished. Two boys swung under the tree on a makeshift seat, cut out of a discarded car tyre. They clutched the swing’s rough ropes with one hand each. Without bothering much to reduce the swing’s momentum, a third boy jumped onto the tyre and worked his way up to stand on the rest of their shoulders. His cries of victory rang through the air.
The woman had gathered up all her cooking in a sack and signaled to me to follow. She glanced into a torn canvas tent open to the sky, washed clothes piled on stone blocks. A three-wheeled rickshaw in disrepair tilted into a peepal tree.
This was a rag pickers’ colony, there were huge sacks of discards lying all over the open grounds as far as the eye could see. The sacks followed one inside the house. On an old chair, its spring coils visible, a young boy sat eating a roti. He briefly stopped to stare back at me. From behind two sacks came a wracking cough.
My respondent parted the clothes on the clothes line for more light and brought in a plastic chair from the lane outside. Her name was Sheila Devi. She worked as a part time domestic worker in the homes of kothiwalas in the neighborhood. Her husband was a rag picker. She had three children, the older two being girls. The cougher was her mother-in-law.
“What change?” she answered, the bindi on her dark forehead shooting up at one of my questions. “I leave for work at 7 in the morning and return late afternoon. I can only change my pad once in the afternoon, behind a sack or send my son out of the room. Not at night. The public toilet is far, on the main road. Twenty minute walk. I only go if I have to, and with my husband or with both my daughters. It’s dark and not safe. There are gundas always hanging around there. There are cars that can see us go in and out on the main road. Anyone can stop… anytime.”
The slum dwellers reported that what bothered them most was not the stench but the mosquitoes. There were swarms that hovered over storm water drains and inside homes, where table fans on varying surfaces whirred as noisily as the insects.
The boy had finished eating. He skipped out to the lane, washed his hands at a plastic barrel with a tap. Next to it was a huge blue drum, half full. He reached into it, brought out half a mug to wash his plate. The waste water moved sluggishly down the storm water drain, choked with vegetable peels, plastic, empty bottles, a paper boat.
“What disposal?” Sheila Devi continued, fiddling with her necklace of colored beads. “We used to throw the used pad in the toilet itself. There are no drums. But the caretakers began fighting with us, said the sweepers would demand extra money to clear the things. So, we had to throw them around the garbage dump.” Her cough became a guttural rasp, but Sheila Devi waved the sound away. “She can’t walk. I can’t take her to the toilet, it’s too far. When she wants to go, I take her to the garbage dump.”
Strains of an old romantic song floated in the lane. It played incongruously over the scene: Hum hain rahi pyar ke, hum se kuch na boliye. Jo bhi pyar se mila, hum usi ke ho liye… Ho liye… A woman sat on her threshold picking lice from a child’s hair, smacking her when she moved. Men, women, children, dogs, hens moved through the lane, deftly meandering around furniture, coolers, luggage, containers, drums, utensils, ladders. From a man’s cellphone came news of a fire breaking out in a slum. The song continued but there was a sudden pause in the lane. I felt breathless, as if my lungs had caught fire.
The girl respondents preferred to speak away from their homes, unless there were younger siblings to mind, or a sick grandparent. Leela and Pratibha had led me to a peepal tree. where we sat on a circular cement slab, cooled by the rustle of luxuriant, heart-shaped leaves.
Swinging her legs, Leela, dressed in a printed kurta pyjama, recalled her first experience of menstruation. Her two plaits swung in unison with her legs. Though she worried a little pimple on her chin with her nail, her face held no worries. Her mouth opened wide when she smiled, broadening her nose, eyes, and forehead.
“I was scared when I saw so much blood,” she said, with surprising cheer. “My mother had never told me. I had seen ads for sanitary pads on television. But the women looked happy and talked about wings and how these things were soft and nice-smelling. I had never seen a packet in my house, but seen Ma wash cloth in the drain, the water coming red. When I told her, she bought a packet of sanitary pads. I learnt how to use it myself, but she stood outside the latrine. The men’s toilet is just on the other side. I did not smell any fragrance. Just so scared. But the good thing is, Ma also began to use them. We can’t afford to use more than two a day; they cost more than 5 rupees per piece. Ma still doesn’t wash her hair during the first three days, still doesn’t light incense to Durga Devi, doesn’t eat pickle or anything sour. But she lets me. We sleep on the floor; my father and brother on the bed against the wall.”
“What about the toilets?” I asked. “Are they safe?”
While Pratibha remained quiet, Leela snorted out. “Safe?” she said. “How can they be safe when there are men hanging around the toilets? Some drink and throw empty bottles into the women’s area. Sometimes they get into fights with the caretaker, try to steal the money collected, even pipes and taps. They will steal anything for money.”
“Then… How do you manage at night?” I asked
“The toilets close at 10. If we need to go, we have to go to some open area after dark. It doesn’t feel safe. My mother always went with me. Now we go in a group of four girls. We chat, we change, we go... It’s just that there are very few open spaces now. And everyone knows about them.”
A young boy jumped all the way to reach us, screeching to Leela that their mother wanted her. As Leela sprinted behind her brother, who continued to jump as he entered the labyrinth, I felt a gloom settle over Pratibha. She plucked disconsolately at a leaf growing out of a crevice in the cement. Still in her blue and white school uniform, her eyes looked large in her thin brown face. Wisps of hair slipped out of her blue hair band, damp with sweat. Her large ears framing her small face made her look nervous, like a rabbit.
While Pratibha remained quiet, Leela snorted out. “Safe?” she said. “How can they be safe when there are men hanging around the toilets?
“My mother makes our sanitary pads herself,” Pratibha said. “One NGO lady came to teach us once. My mother says her own are more comfortable than the shop ones. Cheaper also.” After hesitating, she added, “My mother has pain there…swelling, scratching also. She has seen doctors in those shops on the main road. Still… nothing…. She screams… at night.”
Pratibha paused; and I waited for her in silence.
“My friends say this is dirty blood,” she said. “That’s why nobody talks about it, not even our mothers. Not even when there is pain. My mother says not to eat this and that, says I have to be careful now, dress modestly, not talk to boys.”
I drew a deep breath before speaking. “This blood is natural. You see you have reached an age when your body is getting ready. It can actually have a baby. So, it prepares itself. A little egg gets formed now. It reaches the uterus, the bacchey dani. The skin inside the uterus swells up. But when nothing happens, when there is no contact with a man… there can be no baby. So, this skin, this lining, which is really blood, flows out of a girl’s body. It is natural. The body just gets ready every month.”
Pratibha looked wide-eyed but slipped away as silently as a ghost when my colleagues approached the tree at day’s end. The discussion focused on disposal. Apparently, the women themselves had arranged to put cardboard cartons in the toilets, but it didn’t work because the cartons got wet and the cleaners couldn’t pick them up. There was a suggestion that used pads could be burnt in earthen pots. The smoke could keep mosquitoes away too. But this would attract attention, something that the women least wanted. Just then, a pig finished groveling in a garbage pile and sailed past us with a soiled pad in its mouth. We decided to recommend this method, anyway.
The group broke up at the main road. I decided to have a look at the women’s toilet. There was not much gap between the men’s and women’s sections. It was a no-pay toilet, unlike the community toilet complexes where there were fixed fees for bathing and for toilet use. The stench had already begun to affect me when a man reached towards me.
He had a twisted right elbow. He jerked it at me and volleyed, “Auto rickshaw overturned, doctor sahib. First surgery 15,000. Private hospital. They put a plate and many screws. But it just poured pus. I went for another surgery. Different hospital. Sold my auto rickshaw, my wife’s jewelry. Arm still useless. I did not have bananas or milk or egg. I swear. Still the pus. Can’t do heavy work. Do you doctors use old screws from a dead man’s grave?”
He offered a bitter laugh, and then, shot away from sight, just as suddenly as he had appeared.
There were so many health issues in the slum that had struck us as we conducted our menstrual hygiene study: respiratory diseases, diarrhea, malaria, dengue, gastroenteritis, TB, skin infections, arthritis. And then there were the gynae issues that the women had reported: excess bleeding, white discharge, pain during sex, irregular periods, issues related to childbirth. I wondered if these were a direct impact of the excessive mental and physical stresses the women faced, in their world full of discomfort, fear, pollution, violence.
The toilet had white tiles, long discolored. Remnants of paint revealed the instruction: No entry without mask. The hand wash stand had four points for taps; two were stumps of sticks, one leaked a steady stream, the fourth was dry. Four toilets stood in a row. Inside them were Indian-style white ceramic bowls in the ground, with broken cisterns without covers. The bowls were streaky and dark. The paint peeled from mildewed walls. Empty Jerry cans rolled around, but no taps to fill them. Despite this, the floors were wet. There were no wall hooks. There were also no discarded pads. The metal doors clanged heavily in my hands as I opened and shut them, one by one.
That night I dreamt of opening door after door in a need to relieve myself. Toilet after toilet had metal doors with sunken pits in a darkness without any cover. I had a mask on.
It was on the eighth day that there appeared a semblance of normalcy. Pratibha followed me into the home of a respondent, whose family was the only one to have a toilet of its own. There was a hand pump outside. An iron ladder led up to a flat cemented roof where clothes lay stretched for drying.
I sat long with this woman who had only positive things to share about the questions I asked. She made fresh snacks and tea twice a day which her husband sold from a shop in the main market. They were from Bihar, but she couldn’t remember when they had come to live here. Her home was made of brick and had windows for outlets. She spoke as she fried pakoras, her back resting against a gas cylinder. The pakora-smell infused the whole room. A huge tiffin carrier stood next to a folding chair into which a lanky teenage boy had folded himself. Clothes lay folded neatly on folding cots.
As voices rose in the lane outside, the respondent became less and less audible. I strained to hear her as she spoke of her supportive husband who gave her the confidence to speak openly in the house about her health issues, even menstrual issues. “That’s how the toilet got built,” she said, pointing to an iron door.
By now, the shrieks from outside had turned into a full scale brawl. Voices of women raised in unison.
Pratibha moved to the threshold, while the woman’s son ambled out to lean against a wall in the lane. At first, Pratibha looked fearful, frozen. Then, animated. I suddenly realized that I had never been inside her home. I didn’t think any of us had interviewed her mother. But I recalled Pratibha saying her mother made sanitary napkins for them herself. Her father, I knew, was a rickshaw puller. Strangely, she just hung around me, every moment she could. While Leela often skipped out of sight, it was Pratibha who led me out of the labyrinth of lanes, especially the dark narrow lanes where even two people could not walk abreast.
She was in a long, faded dress today, only her shins and ankles visible. She wore her blue band but her hair was open. Her gaze remained fixed on the scene outside.
The lanky boy returned, picked up a pakora, and folded himself back into the chair.
“Same thing,” he said in a bored voice, between bites. “A girl was pinched in the dark gullie. But this girl is tall and stout. She dragged him into the open, screaming so everyone could hear. This time the women ran out together. They beat him with chappals. They have held him by the ears and are making him apologize.”
His mother said nothing, but gave her son a long, meaningful look.
Perhaps it was my own cheer that seeped into the atmosphere, but, once outside, everything felt normal and acceptable: television sounds, women peeling vegetables, a boy playing with a metal discard, a man shaving at a mirror, the drain overflowing, broken stone beneath my feet, a child spinning a tyre around barricades, women sorting rag pickings, dogs howling, the stench….
It was Pratibha who led me to our ‘discussion’ tree. As I waited to catch my breath, her face looked tense, grim but she said nothing.
Perhaps it was my own cheer that seeped into the atmosphere, but, once outside, everything felt normal and acceptable: television sounds, women peeling vegetables, a boy playing with a metal discard, a man shaving at a mirror, the drain overflowing, a child spinning a tyre around barricades, the stench….
“Pratibha,” I said, “Do you feel unsafe sometimes?”
No answer.
“Do you go to the toilet with your mother, Pratibha?”
Her rabbit ears were red as she turned to look at me. She shook her head and said, “My mother is mostly sick. She has lost her job. She doesn’t speak much now.”
I couldn’t recall if she had any brothers. “Do you have friends?” I persisted. “Where do you change?”
Pratibha stared at me, then looked away. “My mother insists my father go with me after dark.”
Two hens clucked past us, pecking unceasingly at things on the ground. I watched them with fascination, and allowed the long silence between us.
“Are you ok, Pratibha?” I finally asked again. “There are lady doctors in public hospitals where your mother can be treated. The fees are low, the medicines cost less than the market. Of course, the tests have to be paid for…”
“At night,” she finally said, “my father… he... he…’. Pratibha looked stricken; her face contorted with fear. When the tears came, they flowed unceasingly.
When she fled, I stared at the sheaf of respondents’ sheets. My strongest impulse was to hand them over to the rag pickers. Ultimately, I stuffed them into my bag, staggered to the main road, hailed an auto rickshaw, and lurched myself back home.
That night, I dreamt of a huge garbage pile, a pile so high I could just see a moving speck on its peak. It looked like a crow. As I approached to peer more closely, I saw it was Pratibha. I jerked awake, my body tense, my face soddened with tears.
***
Neera Kashyap has published a book of short stories for young adults, Daring to Dream (Rupa & Co.) and contributed to several prize-winning children’s anthologies. As a writer of poetry, haikai, short fiction and book reviews, her work has appeared in Kitaab, Mad in Asia Pacific, Spillwords, Papercuts & Setu Mag; the Indian journals include Indian Quarterly, Out of Print Magazine & Blog, RIC Journal (Indo-French), Guftugu, Teesta Review, Usawa Literary Review, Muse India, The Bombay Literary Magazine and Yugen Quest Review. She lives in Delhi. You can find her on Twitter: @NeeraK7 and Instagram: @neerakashyap.
