Hello stranger!

I am always amused whenever a male friend takes an interest in this subject, simply because they put up hilarious questions sometimes.

(How do you know you’re having it? At what time does it start and stop? For how many hours per day does it go on? What if you’re out somewhere and it happens?)

I thank you for taking an interest in the subject that not many men know about, because of the lack of communication between families regarding the subject. Let’s change this.

To answer your question…

Menstruating women WERE considered unclean because;

• the blood that leaves the body during menstruation is the bad, unhygienic blood and mucus.
• In the absence of proper sanitaries, women had to use cloth pads that weren’t good from the hygiene or comfort point of view.
• A cloth cannot hold a coloured staining liquid-ish substance for long. Not without staining all the layers of clothing.
• While still being moist, it will have a tendancy of being prone to the bad bacteria growth.

They weren’t just prohibited from entering temples, but also from cooking with the fellow ladies, touching cooked food in the kitchen & maybe a lot of other things that have now become visibly obsolete; from the kind of family background that i hail from…. probably with increased access to better hygiene and consciousness with subsequent generations(?)

A fresh perspective;

It was done to give the menstruating women a break from

• the cooking (for HUGE joint families), and
• avoiding the burdensome time-consuming mind-numbing number of daily ritualistic activities.

Atleast that’s how my Nani chose to explain it to a no-bullshit-taker, non-religious, rebel grand daughter.

What matters today is,

More (not all) women have better hygiene when it comes to their menstrutating days’ habits and routine. But, I guess everybody who’s been brought up in a religious hindu family knows the kind of importance that’s been given to the cleanliness of the temple area specially the idols.

It’s even said that REGARDLESS of your gender, you cannot offer ‘prasad’ to the deity if you haven’t taken a bath that day. Why? Hygiene.

Should women be allowed to enter temples?

IDK! This issue is better left upon the religious hindus themselves, if they’re ready to take a chance with the cleanliness of their religious place. Given that, these public temples entertain a lot of crowd each day, women included, and it cannot be said for sure which amongst these women might(/not) still be having access to this necessity.

(Hmm, Something to think about after 70 years of Independence.)

I’d really like to believe that a significant part of the people opposed to the SC verdict on Sabarimala case are genuinely worried about the health and hygiene of the visiting ladies.

PERSONAL VIEWS;

My mother tells me, that although being hygienic, growing up she didn’t always have an access to sanitary pads. She would do what the elder women did in her family. As she grew up to take care of a nuclear family, by herself…. she had no choice but to cook even while on her periods. Which obviously made her question the years long stigma she had experienced.

Although she still asks us kids to gather the stuff relating to Diwali poojan rituals.. not touching them herself because these habits do not die easily even if a person happens to be non-religious, like her. I’ve inherited the same. IDK why, Diwali poojan at dad’s office is the only exception I’ve kept aside. Probably because it has other participants whose sentiments I’m not familiar with and do not wish to hurt.

When it comes to the Diwali poojan at home, with my parents & 2 siblings, NONE of us gives a flying f*ck about it. {Well, mostly because we’re tired by the time the 2 poojas are over. We have a diwali ritual of our own where all of us make aalu-puri and laapsi(dessert) and eat it together in a huge thaal(plate). HUGE.}

AN EVEN MORE PERSONAL INPUT

Few months back my Nana passed away. There was a lot of gathering the day his body was to be taken away for cremation.

(he had always asked for a body donation but that wasn’t ALLOWED by the orthodox community).

I was pretty attached to him but wasn’t ALLOWED to go near his body or touch his feet for the one last time, while all of my male cousins and relatives did. They wouldn’t even let his wife & 3 daughters do that!

I’m not sure if this was the reason behind it too.

(While preventing me from entering a temple does not directly affect me, this thing did. I wanted to see my nana for the last time!)

Interestingly, these 4 women happen to be very educated & empowered and a bunch of angry men were not physically strong enough (although they tried their best) to stop them from touching and adoring the corpse of a man they loved so dearly. It was one of my weakest moments to witness them FIGHTING and horrifyingly crying at the same time over his lifeless body.

In the next 12 days of the ritualistic ‘ceremony’ that followed, (the one that my nana had asked NOT to have) I had to deal with a number of different situations relating to this. I was blatantly asked not to enter the kitchen or serve food during those 5 days.

Now I sir, happen to be a very hygienic person. And the person who we were mourning was not a religious person AT ALL. And we were mourning not just his loss, but the loss of the fact that his body couldn’t be given away to Science, like he wanted. His last wish.

So I went ahead, and shamelessly ‘destroyed’ the faith & belief of these people who visited to have food served by a mourning family. For 5 days of the 12 day long ‘ceremony’ … a menstruating me ‘sinned’ by serving them food :)

Sources: Nani, Mummy & 21 years of frustration.