I read about Lakshmi’s life in the mountains of Nepal and her journey to the cities in India. In the book her mother speaks of the tradition once a girl has started her menstrual cycle. “You must stay out of sight for seven days’ she says. ‘Even the sun cannot see you until you’ve been purified.” (First blood, pg. 14)It is curious that she must stay hidden and cannot talk to men. Before she was free and able to run around and play and practically do as she pleased. Now that she is flowered she must act with great respect and be very resigned. What is the history behind that? It is obvious that men are looked upon higher than women but what of the feet kissing and waiting to eat dinner until after the man has finished. Is it a sign that the woman serves the man? Why do they have to go into hiding? It is significantly different to our culture where getting a period can be looked upon as a good thing. It signifies that a girl is now a woman. According to Being A Woman in Nepal and Ethics in Action, women are seen as impure while menstruating. They cannot leave the house except to use the facilities, and they cannot cook or serve food and drinks. They will “pollute” the house with their unsulliedness. Some are banned to houses called Goths, which are normally old cow sheds. Women will sometimes go there during their period or right after the birth of a child to prevent the household from getting “soiled”. It is said in the culture that if a woman touches ripe fruit it will go bad or if they fetch water from a well it will dry up. Women who do not abide by these laws are seen as unsafe and will ruin the genitals of their sexual partners or have demon children. Women cannot look up at the sun, eat dairy, or talk to anyone of the male species in fear of polluting them. This is an idea that has not spread in the western countries. These beliefs are based off of Hinduism and are very old, and to westerners seem quite outdated.
I find it fascinating that we both wrote on the same topic because obviously it was such a shocking thing to read about that we both decided to do more research on it. I thought that your information was beyond fascinating and I felt appalled when I discovered just how many men are afraid of women bleeding for five days. However, I did find out that in Shaktism, a sect of Hinduism, there are festivals that are conducted in order to celebrate the "Menstruation of the Earth" (www.wikipedia.org) which as you can tell is a completely different reaction to a woman getting her period. A sad fact of life is that if males were the gender that were getting their period, everyone would think of them as strong and brave for conquering five days of pain and blood. However, because we're women and almost everything we do or say is naturally looked down on, we just have to hide away from the world like forgotten toys or damaged goods.
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