84% Indian girls not ready for menstruation, shame leads to poor hygiene
Kala was 11 when she had her first menstrual period . She was at home preparing for her final exams and panicked when she found herself bleeding . “ My first reaction was to panic,” recalled Kala (name changed to protect identity), a college student in southern Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore district. “I thought I had contracted some serious illness and I was going to die. What would happen to my exams? Should I ask my father to take me to the doctor?” Kala had called out to her mother in panic. ” My mother did not come,” Kala said. Instead, the old woman who lived next door did. “After bustling about and getting me to bathe, she took me to a room near the cowshed, asked me to sit on a wooden plank, which had already been prepared for me and asked me not to move from there,” she said. Kala was given some food and water and left alone. It was evening before she saw her mother. “ Instead of comforting me and taking me home, my mother told me that I was a big girl now and that I sho...