Laxmi’s Padgiri

“Thak thak thak thak.... thak thak thak thak...”

Something was punching in my ears in my dreams, I thought for a moment. There was again that irritating thumps penetrated into my head. I thought I was still feeling the sound that was deafening me in the back of the tempo I had travelled the last evening. It took a while to realise that it was not a hallucination or dream.

“thak thak thak thak.... thak thak thak thak...”

The sound bounced in a desperate loop. It was someone on the door. I had heard of peculiar ways of treating people in Pune, but definately did not expect this fashion. So, that’s how we were greeted on our first morning in Pune. But that wasn’t it as something more weird was ready to welcome us in the then emerging metro.

We had shifted our belongings a night ago and yet to place them. That was hardly a space to live as compared to our previous house. But that was it. We were dog tired and crashed out like ice bears the last night. So, it took a couple of moments for both of us to figure out what exactly was going on.

That was something to remember. Afterall, that was the first knock on our new house. In fact, it was a big thump and not a knock. Well begun is half done! I half opened the door to face a furious female face with a big red bindi and underneath it was a pair of eyes shooting out a truck load of anger at me.

“Where’s your wife?” she shouted.

She was right behind me, my wife. She also was taken aback with the dreadful style of welcoming someone in the neighbourhood. I was a bit relieved as my wife, trying as awake as possible, took the charge from me.

“Yes, what is it?”

“Are you having your periods?”

“What?” We both screamed at once. What a way to break the ice! As if take an aim at the iceberg with an excavating machine and boom... make a tunnel. The entire heap of an iceberg is churned into flakes the next moment.

“Are you on with your periods?” The lady was asking in a Marathi dialect. Still, the content prevented us from understanding the meaning, concern and purpose.

“N..n..No.. why?”

“Then it is ok. Let me tell you that our gods don’t allow us and they’ll punish you if you do.”

“What? What for?”

“Let me finish, you’ll be punished by our gods if you throw that f**** cotton in the trash.”

What cotton? What trash? What gods? Why punishment?

Did we commit a blunder by coming to Pune? Is cotton not allowed here?

“Who are you?” my wife seemed to be sorted and brave than me.

“Laxmi... I am a trash collector for your building. You are not supposed to throw your dirty cotton in the trash. Everyone knows here.”

Now, we realised. Not me of couse. My wife realised it first. The girly talk you know. Laxmi was the garbage collector and she found some ‘dirty cotton’ in her basket. She was referring to a stained sanitary napkin. And someone told her that we were the new ones in the housing society, so she thought it might be us who pushed her towards the sins.

“But it doesn’t seem like if you are telling the truth.” And she stormed out of our baffled faces. I was sure she left us to find the culprit and appeal to her gods.

We looked at eachother after closing the door and then we exploded laughing. What was that? We asked eachother, but quickly realised the horrible feeling of Laxmi, the garbage collector, to pick some other woman’s menstrual blood in her hands to dispose off just because she was poor. This happened almost 17 years ago in a suburb in Pune.

That was my first encounter with this situation of sanitary pads. I didn’t have any sister, so I really never needed to face this issue. And we were living in a small village where this thing was a good taboo. The pads met me only after my marriage. But still, I never realised the grave problem till the time I met Laxmi in Pune. Lakshmi never had to wear this scary Avatar against us as we were threatened enough not to throw the ‘dirty cotton’ in her garbage basket. But then where to throw them? That question stayed with me for many days later on.

Slowly, the struggles of life overpowered the sensitivity towards social issues and I almost forgot that incident till the last year. There was a small effort taken by the Pune Municipal Corporation to add some respect to the profession of a waste collector. It was an initiative in association with an NGO called RED DOT. It was a campaign of the same name. The organisation had asked the women to wrap the used pads in the multiple layers of the newspaper and seal it with the adhesive tape, make a big red dot on it to differentiate. This waste would be collected in a separate baskets by the collectors and the PMC workers would pick and the organisation would dispose them. It was such a great initiative. I don’t know if it’s still on. Then, there are some efforts taken by the BJP led central government where they made it compulsory for the manufacturers to provide a leak proof pouch with every napkin. This at least helped to stop leakages and stains in the garbage. At least they don’t have to see what they are picking though they know that it’s there somewhere in the piles of garbage.

The internet is filled with the dangers of sanitary pads and their disposing problems. I read somewhere that the plastic and the chemicals are so hazardous to the environment that these non-biodegradable materials could stay for 800 years. It’s like leaving our sins to be repaid by our future generations if they survive from the extinction during these years.

There’s hardly any change in the situation of the waste collectors in last 17 years, may it be a female or a male. Many residential societies have male garbage collectors. The modern and educated women, living there, hardly have awareness about this issue. Moreover they also don’t have any choice but to throw the sanitary napkins in the garbage. The problem is still more with the offices where women work.

Definitely, we need to give more and more women access to their basic rights of celebrating womanhood. But still, the problem might remain the same. What about the disposal of the pads?

There are disposable sanitary napkins also available, but they are not in everybody’s reach. And there are a few locally made disposable napkin brands that are not much preferred by the women. The other options like menstrual cups need more awareness in India. It’s a one-time investment. Using cotton cloths like old days is not possible for a working woman in a metro. So, all they can do is to rely on the easily available brands over the counter.

And let’s not forget that it’s not only about sanitary napkins. The same sad story tags the baby and adult diapers. There are not enough facilities to collect them and dispose them properly. That too without causing any harm to the environment.

Today, the celebrities are posting their pictures on the social media holding a new and unused sanitary pad in their hands and tearing the shame out of it. We all know that it’s about the movie PAD MAN. It’s a promotional drive. The movie is based on the inspiring greatness of the real life padman - Arunachalam Muruganantham. This might be a real good entertainer, may be a message driven flick. A few lakhs of deprived women might get their honour and they might start using this hygienic option. The leading actor Akshay Kumar might get another national award for this. The director R. Balki may get praises and Mr. Muruganantham certainly will get the deserved bows. Unfortunately, this will fizzle out, barring the exception of Mr. Arunachalam Muruganantham, with the next big release. People will start with new drives and campaigns and worships.

Mr. Muruganantham is no doubt a pad man. He deserves such honour and acknowledgement. But there are many pad men and women around us who are doing equally great job. They don’t ask for a pat on their backs or an honour with an award. All they need is some respect.

I am not an expert on this who has done all the scientific research to come up with solutions. I am a commoner like you who can think. So, please spread a word and see if someone extra-ordinary among us come up with a respectable solution for our garbage collectors so that no Laxmi needs to wear a mask of false anger to hide her shame.

Dre's impatience and Mr. Han's lessons

‘What did you learn?’ mom asks.

‘Nothing...’ he says frustratingly by putting his jacket on the holder of a coat rack standing in a corner and he goes inside. The mother watches him go and then looks at the jacket on the holder. ‘Is this my son?’ she keeps wondering as he goes inside. That is the first time he has tucked his jacket perfectly up on the rack after returning home. He does this exceptional thing and yet he says that he has learnt nothing. Isn’t that something he has earned and he doesn’t even know?

There’s this scene from the famous Hollywood movie ‘Karate Kid’ starring Jackie Chan (Mr. Han) and the little Jaden Smith (Dre) on the television and there is this scene where the little boy, Dre is pissed off at his supposedly kung fu teacher, Mr. Han. The khadoos teacher makes him take off his jacket and put it on a holder and then again taking it off from there and wear and then repeat. He does it for whole evening where as he keeps on hoping to learn some instant kung fu tactics and could use them against the guys bullying him. But the poker faced master goes on this tiring ritual in the name of teaching that he couldn’t realise the reason. He starts following the instructions, uninterestingly first and unknowingly later. Mr. Han doesn’t teach him Kun Fu. Instead, he teaches him a much needed lesson of life, discipline.  And in the process, the boy learns some patience too.

So, when Dre returns home from the first day of training and puts his jacket neatly on the hook, it surprises his mom and what surprises more is him saying ‘I don’t know’. Here, Dre is lucky to have such a teacher though he couldn’t delve the meaning then. But not everyone among us share his luck. Still, each and everyone knows the story of Ekalvya from Mahabharat. Yet we prefer to ignore.

Life gives us lessons. Some become the signposts while other go unnoticed. They don’t leave any visible mark, yet they have their meager existence. In the philosophical words ‘life is a training session that ends with us.’ This might be the reason why people take it for granted. Nobody likes a nagging teacher around. We tend to ignore the lessons even though we know we are being taught. Ekalavya’s story ends with him losing his thumb. We all remember that.

Therefore, people might be saying that life screws us all. It takes its toll. Folks, life is not a social media enthuasiast that will troll you. We get screw only when we ignore a lesson taught by life. In other words we get punished for not learning from the lesson we call a mistake.

Nobody is sent perfect in this world. The person achieves so, will become god. And this world still belongs to humans, barring a few self proclaimed gods or messengers of gods. We are allowed to do mistakes. In fact we are bound to err and that’s what makes us humans. But we should keep on learning from them.

Some, take learning for losing courage. They cage their hopes inside a shell and never let their aspirations fly again after one failure. Well, that’s a wrong perception of learning from mistakes. One needs to outperform self and shine again. We are allowed to fail again, but with a new mistake. Repeating  a mistake is a crime or it’s like you punishing yourself over and again. Losing heart is not a solution to your mistake, but winning a mistake is.

We all are like little Dre from the movie ‘Karate Kid’ and our Mr. Han is invisible who is at the job of training us. There are people who still have hopes from us like Dre’s mother from the movie. There’s never the end to hope till it actually ends. Better we start putting our coats perfectly on the hangers. This might begin to set our lives on the right paths.

Mistakes are occasional. Learning is eternal.

Shhh..Halt. Sue. Ban. Crush.

Finally, it’s Padmavat and not Padmavati!

I was hoping that the letters would go on receding if the objections continued. Then, it would come down to Padmav and then might be Padma. And then SLB could sue Balki for copyright that he copied 90% of SLB’s film title. Balki just added ‘n’ and made a Padman out of it. Oh! Balki, SLB fans would have protested and your film also could be halted. By the way if Padma was reduced to Pad or further to Pa, don’t forget Balki has already claimed the title - Pa. So, he could have been sued once more.

Shhh..Halt. Sue. Ban. Crush.

Well god bless R. Balki, one of the finest filmmakers, who fortunately haven’t seen any such bans on his films. Wish it would be the same case with SLB who always likes to land in controversies. I think Bhansali must be brain storming with his team before picking up a subject for his films and then must be selecting the ones that is the most controversial of the lot. Deepika and Ranveer like to play the characters that are supposedly historic and SLB likes to play with the characters.

I don’t think he would even consider a script that is plain, simple, message driven and entertaining. Potential of controversy must have been a base eligibility for a subject to be made into a film by SLB. He’s a seasoned one by now. He has this habit of modifying history. There are people who make the history and some who change it. Bhansali along with his opponents fall on the latter category and many will share their quality in our country.

Shhh..Halt. Sue. Ban. Crush.

The government must be seriously thinking of keeping two history books in the school courses - one that is supposedly original and another that is modified or interpreted (for the intellectuals and the fools). And the second book could be like an open source operating system. Anyone can go on adding, editing and modifying as per their desire. People in our country have already distributed the claims of the gods, kings and saints among themselves. And if someone tries to speak against their will?

Shhh..Halt. Sue. Ban. Crush.

By the way, we have an addition to the league of oral scientists. Oral is nothing to do with the organ mouth here. It’s about the tongue dangles inside their mouths which they use absence of thoughts. Real scientists give their lifetime to a single discovery and here we have this new kind who keep on discovering new theories at the drop of a hat (or topis?) Dear Darvin, you were wrong. We were not evolved from monkeys. But we are the ones even now.

That is why we go on aping the cap sellers even today. We halt, sue, ban or crush anything if they tell us. We are told to believe that our prides and faiths are so vulnerable that they can be hurt by anything and everything. We don’t even bother to recheck or even know the fact. We follow our cap merchants blindly. We are still the apes or we are going back to become one. There must be time somewhere we were still human. Sadly, not now.

Shhh..Halt. Sue. Ban. Crush.

Let’s hope the newest outing of SLB - Padmavat - turns out to be different than his habit. But all we can do is to hope. He’s even altered the proverb now, Jaisi bharni, waisi karni.

Shhh..Halt. Sue. Ban. Crush. 

GODS MUST BE SORRY!

Once again we proved that you don’t deserve us, God! In fact, we should have decorated your bravery or at least could show you that we tried. But we did nothing, as usual. Once again we failed to take you closer to your dream or we don’t want to do so. You spent your whole life giving us pride and confidence. You did it for the sake of the pure love for what you have been doing and we always thought it was your duty. After serving us for more than two decades, you saw a little dream and shared it with us. We too promised you that we will make it true for you. But are we really worth of even sharing?

We have been doing this for years. Whenever you accomplish something great like this, we give up trying to take it further. Somewhere, I am feeling that you are responsible for this. You spoilt our habit of relying on you. We have been watching you making everyone awestruck. We have been so busy admiring your matchless enthusiasm, effortless looking skills, out of the world persona, godly humanity and that every single thing making you extra ordinary. In this whole process, we forgot our duty to learn from you and put our at least 10 percent to add to your glorious performance. But we failed.. almost each time and you made us lazy, God!

And then the-anti god factor kept on repeating that ‘you perform, but we don’t achieve’. And we get busy arguing about your greatness which has been proven for more than 1000 times.

But you were god and will always remain the way you are. You never bothered of us or the anti ‘you’ factor. You kept on doing great for us and kept on learning from your mistakes.. silently and effectively. You don’t talk, your weapon does. But till when, GOD? Till when will you keep doing such great things which will go in vein just because of us and yet forgiving us?

I am feeling strongly that the god sitting there above has made a blunder. HE has sent YOU in the place where there are people like us whom you don’t deserve at all. We are the people who have always let you down, but still you loved us. Even those GODs must be sorry to send you, our own god, here amongst us.

Sorry Sachin.. (I know you’ll forgive us.. the way you have been doing for years)!