On Periods and War
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a female on a month-long outstation work schedule will eventually be in want of sanitary napkins.
Earlier this week, Zomato India annouced a new policy that grants paid period leave (up to 10 days in a year) to its employees. In a year that has so far had a decade worth of bad news condensed into 8 months, this was a welcome piece of news that was lauded by most. Among the objectors, a senior Indian journalist’s views rang louder than others.
These tweets took me back to 2015, when I was part of a documentary crew filming a story on Siachen glacier, the world’s highest battleground and an intensely militarised zone. It is rare for aspiring media professionals to traverse this region without thinking of Barkha Dutt, who epitomised storytelling from conflict and war zones during her time as an NDTV journalist covering the Kargil War that broke out in 1999. (Controversies that followed about this reportage years later didn’t quite succeed in overshadowing her work as a frontline war reporter.) Though given the option of flying to Leh from Delhi and then going to Siachen Base Camp by road, I chose to undertake the entire journey to Siachen by road with the rest of the crew, simply because that makes for a better story.
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A few days into our journey, as we made our way deeper into Ladakh, I noticed that the only thing starker than the landscape was the prototypical Dry Toilet made of tin sheets that threatened to fly away with every gust of strong autumn wind. We broke from the usual route to the glacier to spend half a day filming at Turtuk, a border village of surreal beauty that holds significance since it came to be occupied by Pakistan during the First Kashmir War (1947–48) and was reclaimed by India in the Indo-Pak War of 1971.
Somewhere along the 5 hour drive from Leh to Turtuk, I got my period — a discovery I made in one such aforementioned toilet that one approached after a short hike off the road. I was carrying the necessary paraphernalia in my bag, including a pain killer which I popped immediately. The sense of relief of not having to wonder anymore about which inopportune moment my cycle would strike at was minimal compared to the agonising cramps that were starting to pick up pace. I have often described this pain as “someone punching my stomach from the inside”. I wasn’t reporting from the frontline, neither was I placed in the midst of an active war zone (unless you’re taking what my ovaries were up to into account). But a simple assessment of my deliverables for the day clearly indicated that the need of the hour overrode the physical discomfort I was in. I powered through because I knew how far I could push myself. Opting for leave did not cross my mind that day. There was too much riding on our tight crew, the painkiller had kicked it, and I had an umbrella that doubled as a walking stick and helped me hike into and out of Turtuk village.
At the time, I was grateful to not be a part of the large percentage of women who deal with crippling menstrual irregularities and ailments like endometriosis, menorrhagia, fibroids, PCOS, migraine and more. However, I don’t think anyone whose body undergoes greater than usual stress during this time is disqualified from “want(ing) to join the infantry, report war, fly fighter jets, go into space”, or for that matter filming a documentary across Ladakh’s cold deserts. Let’s not be reductive when it comes to biodeterminism. Instead of trying to erase the existence of physical differences, we should focus on accepting the fact that these differences do not make one side better or lesser than the other.
Period leaves will not lead to women not being hired as part of a film crew again. If anything, I’ve seen my female colleagues work doubly hard to catch up on any work they’re missed due to a period, and have been guilty of that myself too. Skill and work ethics aren’t determined by the attributes of one’s biological sex, and period leaves should not leave some kind of permanent scar on one’s hallmark of quality. If an employer or an organisation holds or propagates these views, they’re only adding to the toxic work culture that India by now is famous for, particularly in the fields of filmmaking, journalism, media, PR and fashion. If biology became the great big determiner of dreams, a fat load of the world’s inventions, discoveries and ideas would still be waiting to happen.
(Click here to let me shamelessly redirect you to the trailer of our documentary on Siachen)
