A woman walked into the clinic with a sad face and worried look. Behind her was a small, scared girl, about eight or nine years old.
As soon as she sat down on the chair, she said, "Doctor, please check my daughter."
"Look, if you want me to check the girl's hymen (virginity), I won't do that. Checking a girl's hymen is a very sensitive issue for me, so I apologise beforehand."
"No, no, Doctor, the problem is something else."
"Tell me?" I spoke.
"This is my daughter, who hasn't even had her eighth birthday yet, and 'that' has already started for her," she said, her eyes wide open.
"What 'that'?" I asked.
"That... that... that... periods... My sleep has been ruined at night. Look, such a small girl and periods? Doctor, this is not normal, is it? How will she manage now? She's only in second grade; she doesn't know anything about these things. What will people say?" She spoke without stopping, in one breath, and I held my breath, watching her.
"Look, you should forget about people right away. Your daughter's periods have nothing to do with them."
As I said this, a forgotten memory came to my mind, as if someone had quietly chosen it. Is it true that a daughter's period is not a problem for relatives, friends, and society?
This was when I was dealing with many challenges in life. Job, studies, old parents, and children, along with many other things, some clear and some hidden.
On one such pleasant morning, if your ten-year-old daughter wakes you up from a light sleep and asks you to come to the bathroom, and in the bathroom, there's a pyjama full of blood, believe me, even as a doctor, you might be surprised, worried, and confused, and ask your daughter, "Where did you get hurt, son?"
I decided that I would remove the stain of periods from girls and society's forehead and breathe a sigh of relief
The ten-year-old girl, looking like a six- or seven-year-old because of her small size, with expressions of surprise, fear, and fright in her eyes—what she said after that felt like the sky had fallen on my head!
"No, Mummy, I came to get ready for school. I sat on the commode, and this blood was coming out there too. What is this, Mummy, what happened?"
Now, no one knew that a ten-year-old girl would get her period, so there was no need to tell the daughter about these secret matters yet.
I felt my heart sink. Oh God! Such a small daughter and such a problem at that age! Something about which society not only forbids talking but also has seven layers of shame, modesty, and secrecy.
Now, sometimes I wonder why I felt that way.
I wasn't even that sad when I got my own periods, and I faced it with great bravery and happiness at the age of fifteen. So, what happened that a thirty-five-year-old woman, who is also a doctor, became sad when her daughter got her periods?
Only one thing makes sense to me. In my youth, I was still caught up in the romance of life, far from reality, and life seemed colourful like butterflies and like clouds flying in the sky. After travelling for two more decades, the colour of life's romance had faded in some places, starting to show its ugliness.
The feeling of my daughter getting her periods saddened me because of the challenges and difficult situations that women and girls must go through at every step. My daughter would now have to face them. Now, when she hadn't even crossed the border of childhood and reached the stage of youth. Now, her life would be different.
Counting the days of periods, using pads, buying pads in brown envelopes, careful disposal of used pads, fear of stains on clothes, needing pads and extra clothes in school, difficulty in walking, risk of sores from pads, difficulty in playing games, a pile of medicines for pain, becoming anaemic if there's too much bleeding, taking special care of cleanliness to avoid infection.
All this, the child will have to go through in her body, but what comes after that, both mother and daughter will have to face.
Questions from maternal and paternal relatives, strange and worrying expressions, instructions to hide this news from everyone, being careful to hide pads even from the house cleaner, reminders about purity issues, a hundred questions about the daughter's age and early periods.
Believe me, going through all this, I would get irritated many times because my daughter was very young and needed my help all the time. Placing the pad correctly so that she wouldn't have trouble walking, reaching out to help if clothes got stained, comforting her when she couldn't ride her bicycle, hiding my own worry while looking at her tear-filled eyes and distracting her, giving her medicine for pain and giving her hot packs—I would do all that. But the most difficult part for me was when I had to ask the Quran teacher for leave on special days.
Another problem was free advice. Sometimes I would laugh, and sometimes I would just sit with my head in my hands when close relatives and friends would give advice to a gynaecologist mother. I always wondered in surprise if they thought I bought my medical degree from somewhere, or if my medical degree was not good enough for me to understand my daughter's periods? Perhaps advising without being asked is part of our social values.
Many situations made me realise that there is no place for women's problems in our society, as if they are not even a part of life.
I will never forget that trip to Murree when my daughter's period came suddenly much earlier than the expected date, and it made me see stars in daylight.
Murree is so close that people from Pindi can even go there just for tea. Similarly, one day, we suddenly planned a trip, and I left with the children. Everything was fine when we left home, but when we got out of the car in Murree, the little girl's trousers were full of blood.
Now, the situation was that we didn't have any pads because it wasn't her periods date. There was no bathroom nearby to wash the girl and arrange for a pad or something. How to cover the walking distance to the nearest Army Mess in this condition, and what to do about the blood that was flowing?
Forced, we somehow managed to tie her younger sister's nappy to her in the car with great effort. It didn't close properly but was just tucked into her trousers with difficulty. How hard it was to do all this in the car, and the confusion and helplessness on the girl's face, I can never forget that. Since we had gone for a few hours and had no intention of staying, we had extra clothes for the small children but nothing for the older one. That was my mistake, and I learned a lesson from it.
Now, how to take that little girl with blood-stained trousers to the Mess bathroom, that was the question. I took off my chadar and tied it around her waist. Ignoring my husband's angry eyes, I sent him to the medical store to get pads. And I reached the Mess pushing a worried ten- or ten-and-a-half-year-old girl, and another baby who was just starting to walk and was sitting in a pram.
As soon as we reached the Mess, my daughter and I locked ourselves in the bathroom, where she took a shower, and I washed her clothes. Until I dried and ironed her clothes, my chadar stayed with her. This crisis also included military scoldings. The unexpected periods had ruined our picnic, but that day I realised what kind of difficulties girls can face.
Now I think that if periods were not linked to so much shame and hesitation, how easy it would have been to get from the parking lot to the Mess. That short path was truly like a mountain on my nerves.
My daughter went through all those stages of periods and understands all those difficulties very well. That's why the topic of her Master's thesis was also menstruation. Believe me, on a beautiful evening in New York, listening to her feelings at the university graduation ceremony opened many doors of thought, and I thought that if these stages can be difficult for a gynaecologist's daughter, then for other girls, these stages must be even more difficult and painful.
That day, I decided that I would remove the stain of periods from girls and society's forehead and breathe a sigh of relief.
Translated by Dr. Santosh Kamrani from Urdu.