COVID, Isolation and Periods

 My husband tested positive for COVID on Thursday, and I followed shortly thereafter, developed symptoms on Sat night and tested positive Sunday morning. On Thursday, after hubs tested positive, the rest of us tested and it came back negative. We decided it was prudent for him to isolate in our room. When I tested positive, I joined him, and boy oh boy, was he glad for the touch and closeness of another human being. As we isolated together, I have since had the pleasure of his company and proximity.

This episode brought back to memories of needing to isolate during our periods. I was raised in a conservative Hindu brahmin family, the household of a Vadhyar, no less. I am married into an equally conservative family, so nothing jarring either way. Elaborate daily pujas were the norm, and menstruating women and girls were considered impure, and therefore not allowed to be in contact with anyone/anything that came in contact with umachi/swamy/perumal (various terms denoting the divine in the house).

There were two terms commonly used to describe the isolation - dooram, translated to distance, and aathula illa, translated to not-at-home. These terms literally meant that menstruating women were considered as not belonging inside the household, and needed to be kept at a distance. This was followed in both letter and spirit. 

The practices that isolation meant were as follows. The isolation period lasted until the fourth morning from the point it was made public, essentially through three nights. We had to let someone in the household know as soon as we knew, and the countdown began from there. At that point, we had to withdraw out of common spaces, retreat into a private space.  All physical contact was cut off, and movement was severely restricted. 

Anything you needed, you needed to ask for and someone would give it to you. Since dooram spread by touch, things you needed will not be handed to you, they would be dropped on the floor, and you could pick it up when npn-dooram folks are no longer touching the thing. You could not enter the kitchen, access the refrigerator or the dining table, so when someone remembered to give you food, you would get food. All the utensils you used in the process are dooram, and had to be accumulated, washed up and left. The non-dooram folks would wash them again and then can be re-circulated. If you needed meds, or a hot towel, same process. 

Sleeping arrangements were another nightmare. You are not allowed to sleep on the bed - because bed, by association, becomes dooram. Had to sleep on the floor on mats, pillows and bedsheets would be provided. When period of isolation ended, all the clothes that you touched, including pillow covers and bedsheets needed to be rinsed off, and the act of bathing cleansed you and the dooram clothes, and you could walk out and mingle with the non-doorams. 

You are not allowed to participate in any festivities. Of course you are allowed to eat in the feast that is typical of most festivals, but not with everyone else. Separately, after everyone has eaten. When food got cold and boring. We didn't have a microwave while growing up, so heating anything up was arduous. Amma would offer to make fresh vadai, but I could understand she was tired, so why be a burden. Cold food, eaten alone in the confines of the room, was good. Oh, and you are of course not allowed to visit temples. Most of the trips we took as a family were to visit temples or to attend weddings, so if you were on your period, you had to sit out the trip. Along with one other female adult, well, because you had to be fed. 

Anyone you touched during the dooram period, including children, also became dooram, They can be cleansed of the dooram by bathing, but as long as they are dooram, dooram rules apply to them as well. 

Now consider what these rules do to a girl.  The first time she gets her period, when she is barely ten, eleven, twelve years of age - an event causing intense confusion, bewilderment and actual fear - she is bombarded with rules of what she ought not to do, when what she needs is possibly the exact opposite - care, pampering, love, acceptance. In addition to the hundred things she suddenly need to keep track of - be prepared when Aunt Flo comes unannounced, make sure you change sanitary products on time so you don't leak, but don't change too early because these things are expensive, keep looking over your shoulder to see if you are staining your white skirt, what to do if you do end up staining, what works for period cramps, changes in your body, physical, emotional, hormonal - there are new rules for expected behavior at home. 

Every month serves as a reminder that you are an outsider in your own home. The home that you thought was the place where you could be all that you are, in all its glory, is not a place for you for those three days. You want to know what was the worst part for me? It is that I am cut off from physically being comforted - an embrace, a stroke of the hair when I lay on the lap of my mother, the hand of my loved one when I am curling up in bed.

The practice is perpetuated by the women of the household - my mother followed it because her mother and mother-in-law did, just like the women before them. My mother claimed that she is less strict with us than she had experienced with her mother, and somehow that did not make it any better for me. 

The practice is deeply damaging to the psyche. It somehow assumes that the needs of the menstruating girl/woman are less than that of the others - other members of the household, especially the men who perform the pujas. It forces the woman to minimize herself - minimize her space, minimize her movement, minimize her expression, minimize her needs. Every month, like clockwork, it is a constant reminder of the expectation from the world that she not be seen. That she needs to hide from the world during her lowest times. 

In case you didn't catch it all along, I deeply abhor the practice. I was glad for the times I got my period when I traveled outside town for work. When I left home for MBA, my first thought was I can do what I want in my dorm room. That home becomes a place where I'd rather be away from - is a sad state. When my needs are pitted against the sanctity of the divine, it is hard to be religious. The anger which should rightly be focused on the patriarchy that perpetuates it, is now directed towards the divine. Well, She did nothing to protect me! 

If much of what I have written seems alien to you, boy I am so glad. There is hope for a better world for the scared, young girl. If it does not, read on.

I do not care much for the origins of the practice, or what the upsides are. That there are variations of the practice in several households, does not make it better. That the more severe variations of the practice are correlated with economic prosperity and educated households, makes it worse. That some of you feel proud that you continue to uphold this tradition, makes you less in my eyes.