I was frantically hunting for a pharmacy in the airport, astounded at my absentmindedness in forgetting to carry such an essential necessity. I blamed it on perimenopause. Despite belonging to the minority 10% of women who do not suffer from characteristic symptoms that describe this transitional period, like insomnia, fever, mood fluctuation, forgetfulness, depression...it seems to be my easy excuse for everything these days. I board the flight without a single sanitary pad. It was impossible to accommodate a packet of fifty pieces, which was surprisingly the only available choice I had. Years of solo travelling had rewarded me with an instinctive ability to improvise. As always, I was rather excited about the incidents and co-incidents that inevitably occur during a journey.   

 

After my daughter Aditi entered college, I decided to self-structure time periods each year away from the rhythm of my existing life in Baroda, and keep this as a work agenda for the next ten years, if possible. I realized that distancing myself from familiarity forces me to think outside of the box and challenge the limitations posed by circumstance. For my first self-structured residency project, I chose the quaint and extremely beautiful town of Carhaix in northwest France where a dear friend of mine, Myungza, runs a book-making atelier and a Korean restaurant. She consciously uses only recycled and organic materials for both her enterprises and most of the components and implements of the home and restaurant are environmentally friendly as well.  The two months I spent here allowed me to engage with a very different lifestyle – eating fresh organic food every day, free from household chores and duties, breathing in clean air, walking in public spaces that were beautifully maintained, meeting strangers and unknown people who cared to be pleasant -I needed little else to enjoy the residency. 

 

I was then suddenly surprised to meet a familiar visitor after months.

In a woman’s life, there are two occasions of physical and emotional upheaval that are initiated by hormonal changes - one being adolescence and the other is menopause. Both these transitional phases demand adaptation and are followed by consequences. At the age of 52, I am nearing the last stage of the bodily function of bleeding at an average of five days every month. A healthy woman bleeds almost 500ml every year and 16 liters for 35 to 37 years, from the very first menstruation cycle until menopause.

 

Biological residues such as fallen hair, blood or cut nails belong to you forever even when they are no longer attached to one’s body. When my period occurred after many months, interestingly I felt suddenly emotionally moved by the bloodstains on this self-styled sanitary pad that I had made for myself. Reminiscent of a creature or a still-life object or an active volcano or Chinese landscape paintings...these stains evoked in me complicated emotions that perhaps had lain dormant for many years. I began peeling the layers of the tissues that I had constructed as a pad, and drying them against light from the window in the bathroom. 

 

Memories from the recesses of my mind came back to me as I looked at these dried, stained and unfolded tissues. This blood has imparted to me an identity as a woman, asked or unasked for. In many societies there is a celebration when a girl-child gets her first menstrual cycle. It is in fact a celebration of female fertility, with pro-creation as the expected consequence within her life. Certain parts of Bavarian society of southern Germany once practiced the “windowing” custom where young women left their windows open at night for men to enter their bedrooms once they came of age. If a woman became pregnant, the man asked for her hand in marriage. Women who couldn’t conceive were unable to find a husband. Fertility in this culture, like many others, was paramount to the identity of a woman and such customs were used as ratification.

 

It was interesting to observe that while viewing these works men were unable to immediately discern the bloodstains but women could instinctively identify it even before I mentioned the medium used within the artworks. Always encouraged to disengage from this aspect of the female physiology, menstrual bleeding remains outside the purview of a man. For nearly a year I have been working on this series with stained tissues by means of touching, smelling, tearing, sticking, washing, drying – and came to learn that it has no odor associated with blood once completely dried. This entity that inspires many whispered monikers is visually difficult to distinguish from the blood from a finger cut, remnants of red wine or tea stains. Using this as a medium has been for many reasons of importance for me- from the obvious premise of personal engagement with myself, but equally from the collective history of what menstruation is associated with.  

 

Perhaps I need to close one chapter as I start upon another -  and so I weave these trace-memories and enshrine the history of my female identity in these fifty-two works that become markers of my life lived in purgation.