For Naseema, a member of the Gujjar tribal community in Kashmir, adolescence was not always pleasant. There were days every month when she was ordered to stop certain activities she loved and told not to eat or drink certain items.
She couldn’t play in the stream near her house or enjoy her favourite drink, lassi. Naseema, who is now 35 and has two daughters, said this happened every time she menstruated. “My mother told me not to go near water and not to drink anything cold.”
Sitting in the courtyard of her one-storey house, playing with her four-year-old daughter, pangs of pain hit her again. Naseema has been menstruating for the last two days. She knows it is time to change the cloth she has been using to stem the flow of blood. She goes up to the rooftop and gets another cloth – part of an old blue scarf – and positions it in her underwear.
