Hello ji: Womaning Talks #1

Menstruation jokes are not funny. Period.

Hello ji,

Next week’s post will officially be Womaning in India’s one-year anniversary post.

I feel overwhelmed with all the love you have sent my way in the past year. And although just thinking about it makes me want to write a love saga for you, I will park the saga for next week’s edition.

Womaning in India has turned out to be many things, but it began – first and foremost – as an experiment I conducted on the internet, my readers, and most of all, myself. Check out the tentative language of my first post, if you don’t believe me.

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Continuing in the theme of experimenting on myself, I am launching a new format of Womaning posts today.

This new series will be called “Hello ji”, the Womaning talks. From here on, one of these talks will be interspersed every now and again with the usual long-form storytelling that you are used to seeing here.

I am beginning the series with a conversation that I recorded with a doctor friend on the occasion of WHO’s World Menstrual Hygiene Day – which happened to fall a week after I published the piece Menstruation Jokes are not funny. Period.

In this conversation, my friend, Dr. Anushree Vartak, and I talk about all things periods.

• how the girls in our classes were mysteriously shipped off to a secret location for “the talk” when we were teenagers
• how “the talk” came woefully late for all of us and was preceded by all sorts of conspiracy theories and myths around periods
• how it affects the self-confidence of young girls and women
• that society may be sexist but science is no better because“the most worrying trend in female health research is the lack of it”
• and many more anecdotes from Anushree’s medical career, my laywoman life, plus stories shared by listeners who caught this call live on the Womaning Instagram page

Here is the complete conversation:

You can also download the whole talk and watch it at leisure on your phone’s YouTube app.

As with any good experiment, I want to keep taking feedback on what worked and what didn’t so that I can figure out what I can do better going forward.

So, tell me how you liked this new format. Would you like the conversations to be shorter? Longer? Is there another app that you think might be better to record these conversations – whether virtual or physical? Would you like me to ask better questions? Wear a funny hat?

Let me know in your comments, emails, tweets, DMs… you know the drill.

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I should also end by sharing that another surprise awaits you in my next post, which will be the official one-year anniversary special kamaal dhamaal grand golden bonanza post.

Until then, keep it shaking, party people!

Mahima

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