Yes I BLEED!

Talking about menstruation is stigmatized to an extent where she knows not why she bleeds!
Mommy, please explain to her that it's not impure
Aunty, tell her it's just natural
Tell her it's nothing bad
Why whisper it! ...

Scream out loud! Yes we BLEED!

Calling yourself progressive?
Well, you shouldn't be.
With temple doors shut on her face,
Within the confined space,
Oh, see her cry, feel her pain.
Face it! Yes she bleeds!

Why shouldn't I touch you?
Why shouldn't I have evening tea with my family?
Why shouldn't I breathe next to your food?
Let me breathe! Let me live! Let me be free!
For, I bleed to give a life.

#YesIBleed

The Last Rays of Humanity.

The plan was to gatecrash a wedding.
Dressed to suit the occasion, we took the train to Mylapore hoping to eat some Kalyana sapadu.
A series of questions were raised by the auto man about the wedding party and the marriage hall we were looking for, as we made him take us to three closed wedding halls. We had no choice but to get off that auto, to avoid those questions.

"I am hungry! What are we going to do now?" Ancy asked me. ...
"I know exactly what we are going to do!" I told as I grabbed her hand and crossed the road.
Why not test the generosity of our people?
The focus now shifted to orthodox brahmin households around.
We wanted to try eating dinner with random families.
Mr. Varadharajan, a retired economics professor let us into his house. Though we had highly conflicting ideas on demonetisation, I overlooked it as we got to drink Mylapore filter coffee made by the 'maami' herself! After almost an hour, we got to know that they had already had their dinner,so we slowly ended the conversation as we didn't have much time.I could hear my stomach grumble. We were still hungry.

After one or two failed attempts, we met Sarala aunty, a lower-middle class Brahmin housewife in her mid-forties. Though she only let us sit on her staircase, she gave us puliyodharai (Tamrind rice), hot dosas, chutney and paapads. We gobbled up the food as she kept an eye on us.
The satisfaction of a full tummy was just amazing.
On the flip side we did realize a lot of things that we wouldn't have if we had eaten at a wedding.
Be it the elite or the ones in the lower social strata, there still seemed to be the a strong presence of the idea of purity.
When the professor asked if it was possible for us to drink from the glass without sipping it and when the aunty wanted us to wash our hands outside the house, it hit us.
That we still have to deal with the binaries of life...That we are still stuck in the vicious web of castes and communities.