Last year PCT held an all men rally that encouraged men to understand and take better care of their women during their periods. This year, we conducted an online contest: Express Menstruation for children. An online live event will be held on the 28th of May 2020. Dr. Sailaja Kallakuri will speak on the topic of Menstrual Hygiene and common misconceptions surrounding it.

This article is written to celebrate the Menstrual Hygiene day of 2020 with all of you. Children participated in our Express Menstruation Contest to express their ideas on menstruation and hygiene in ways so artistic, they blew our minds away! You can find glimpses of those here.

We thank every child who participated. You’ve shown remarkable initiative and imagination. Congratulations!

You successfully gave us a hard time making the judgment, we were compelled to make many changes and have many discussions. The list of winners and runner ups of PCT’s Express Menstruation Contest 2020 are announced at the end of this article. The winners will receive a cash prize of Rs. 1000/- and the Consolation prize winners will get a cash prize of Rs. 500/-.

Express Menstruation Contest: Menstrual Hygiene Day 2020

Out of all the activities that we conduct in schools during our Swechha sessions, two were picked and an open invitation to participate was circulated in our social handles. The response was fantastic. The kids came up with ideas, so amazing, that we had to increase the no. of winners we planned to have!

Menstrual Hygiene Day Contest Activity 1: Design your dream bathroom

“Most bathrooms do not have proper sunlight or ventilation. In my dream bathroom, I’ll make sure that both these components are included.”

Most children love art and getting creative. Kids dream and design their own imaginary house, balcony, library, bedroom, or kitchen of the future. Most wouldn’t think of designing a dream bathroom. But, kids love to participate when we ask them to design one. You’d be awed by the artistic value of the designs students come up with.

The reason for asking them to draw a bathroom is not just to test their art. Any learning that a kid learns through active participation will stay with them for a long time.

As the activity is clubbed in a session that talks about Hygiene and Health, almost all kids include ideas of sanitation and cleanliness in their drawings. By introducing the idea of designing their own bathroom in a dreamier version, the kids ingrain the idea of hygiene in their brains.

This is a good way to make them explore their own ideas of cleanliness and hygiene while saving them from an hour’s worth of boring lecture time. You’ll be surprised to know that the designs that most kids submit not only include a shower or a fancy bathtub, they also accommodate cleaning brushes and bathroom cleaners.

“I’ll place a money plant in my bathroom. It gives fresh air and can survive indoors. I’ll also place a clock in my bathroom. Most people waste their time, lazing out in bathrooms. Placing a clock will save time and make them more time conscious.”

The dust bins, cupboard to store pads that we often find in their drawings show us how integral Menstrual Hygiene has become in their thought processes. They drew mats to dry feet, hangers to hold towels, combs, hand wash, and lights. Their sanitation material also included traditionally used turmeric, along with soaps, liquid hand wash, bathroom cleaning liquids, etc.

This idea of having Time Clocks in bathrooms could save us all. Perhaps then our mother/ brother can stop nagging us?

We were surprised by the attention to details the kids had. Some contestants drew cabins and cupboards and labeled them to show that they’d store the cleaning equipment out of sight. The objective of our sessions is to create awareness and responsibility towards these issues, so the drawings are a gratifying testimony of that.

Menstrual Hygiene Day Contest Activity 2: Name your Period

Remember all the names we gave our best friend, just to annoy them? Getting a chance to name friends based on our opinions of them is fun. Isn’t it? These names are not generic, they are very special; tailor-made to suit them. They say less about who the other person is and reveal more about what they mean to us.

So, we asked our young students to name their periods. We were quite surprised by the creative names our young ladies came up with.

1. Metamorphosis 

Citing the processes that are painful, yet useful; these contestants reflect the idea of periods being a bitter medicine: hard, but necessary. We all know the story of caterpillars turning into brilliant butterflies after struggling out of the cocoon, right? As this process is called metamorphosis, we got all the entries that follow the pattern under this theme. Students named their periods butterfly, education, land, etc.

“When an irritant enters the shell of an Oyster, it defends itself by coating it with layers of fluid it produces. Overtime, the irritant and the lustrous fluid around it give birth to gorgeous pearls.

So is my period. Though it is painful, uneasy and hard, the menstrual mechanism leads to child birth.”

Metamorphosis has a power about it. It depicts the turbulence that every girl learns to live with. Like a Phoenix rising from ashes, metamorphosis is a true reflection of every girl’s experience of the pains and the purpose of Menstruation.

2. The Bright Side

Out with the old, in with the new: some refreshingly quirky and positive entries also flew in. These remind one of all the reasons why one can love their periods. The general pet names given to one’s menstruation are those that somehow include the pain of the process too. But these entries lightened us up by taking us to the bright side of things.

The most quirky and fun word that stuck by us is ‘Red Mahal’. It is a reconstruction of the world wonder- Taj Mahal, a symbol of love and beauty. Just as the Taj Mahal is a marker of love, our periods also mark one of the loveliest relationships we could experience: motherhood. It was a creative and light-hearted take on periods.

There were a few such refreshing takes on Menstruation. ‘New- World’ is pretty much self- explanatory. The name: ‘Sulit’ was intriguing; it means ‘worth it’. Even though the Sulit touches pain, the optimistic and inspiring rhetoric overpowers the grim, doesn’t it?

3. Eyes on the Prize

Resilience in the face of suffering, that’s a winning attitude, isn’t it? A few of our contestants understood that. To remind themselves of the purpose of their periods, they gave names that remind them of their purpose; giving another purpose and meaning to their periods.

One contestant reminisced about the biological purpose of Ovaries. Explaining how the reproductive system functions to fulfill the purpose of childbirth tirelessly, month after month after month; she noted that that’s what her period reminds her: to be persistent in achieving her goals; to try any no.of times tirelessly.

But, there was one specific contestant who puzzled us with the name she gave: Calendar. It is a very personal name for her as it relates to a hobby she built around her periods. She shared how she decides a specific goal while noting her menstrual cycles on a calendar. Her aim is to determine and achieve a doable goal within one cycle.

In this way, she has new goals associated with every Menstrual cycle of hers; and it is easy to keep track of it. This is why she calls her period, ‘Calendar’, to remind herself of the commitment she makes to herself every month.

Isn’t that brilliant?

4. Philosophical Musings

There are some entries that spoke for themselves. The depth of thought surprised us. Their rhetoric reminded us that, age does not limit one’s abilities to think complex thoughts. One such contestant named her period ‘Breath’.

“Breath: Any creature survives only as long as it breathes. God transferred the power of ordaining this breath onto a being, only to the feminine. This priceless power of motherhood came into my experience for the first time through Menstruation. They all say that Menstruation is a result of Brahma’s curse. But it ordains one with the agency to bestow life through motherhood. Menstruation enables life-breath of a being, so I call it ‘Oopiri’ (Breath).

Translations seldom carry the spirit of poetry. The above poem is a beautiful composition that lingers on the ideas of identity. The name the poet gave to her period is ‘Nenu’ meaning ‘Me’. It means: “I am the one who first introduced the femininity that resides within me to myself through Menstruation. So I call it ‘Myself‘.” Very artistically written in Telugu, this poem propounds self- sufficiency.

Every time we talk to children and give them a task, we are more amazed by the awesomeness of their imaginations. It reminds us of the value of humility. We go back a little more resolved to try a bit harder to give them a beautiful future.

Winners of Express Menstruation Contest

You can find the report on Menstrual Hygiene day 2020 here: Report Menstrual Hygiene Day 2020.

 

5 winners and 3 runner ups were selected for Design your Dream Bathroom. 15 winners & 14 runner ups were chosen for Name your Period. Winners are awarded Rs. 1000/- and Runner ups were awarded Rs. 500/-.

Activity 1: Design Your Dream Bathroom

Winners & Runers

Activity 2: Name Your Period

Winners & Runers

Congratulations to winners, runner ups and all participants of Express Menstruation contest!

You all are amazing!

A similar version of the article first appeared on PCT’s LinkedIn page: Find it here.

If you want to read an article that talks about the socio-economic factors involved in Menstruation and the kind of institutional changes required to support women in their Menstrual Cycles, you’d love to read:- Menstruation: Why men should also know about it?

– Pavani Sairam.