Why am I not allowed to visit a temple when I bleed? Will the pickle really smell foul and unfit for consumption if I touch it while I am menstruating? Why do I have to sit separately to eat during 'that time of the month'?
There are various questions that haunt a girl when she enters this phase of her life where the process of getting transformed into a woman begins. It is the time when the journey of womanhood is embarked and a female becomes biologically fit to produce a child.
People from different traditions have different reactions to this natural phenomenon. We have made a list of some unconventional, bizarre, supportive yet unknown facts and customs about periods that are definitely going to change the way people see it.
Will isolation solve the problem?
People of Rastafarian societies, Bali, Hindus in South India, and certain tribes in Nigeria keep women in isolated and confined huts. This was done to keep the woman away from other members of the family and even her husband because a menstruating woman was considered 'impure'.
Banished for bleeding
In Bali, Bangladesh and in Rastafarianism, a woman is not allowed to cook food or come in contact with anyone's food when she is bleeding. In fact, to safeguard the interest of the society and religious beliefs of people, women are not even allowed to visit temples during 'that time of the month'.
The story of a cultural bath
In Bali and in Orthodox Judaism, after every cycle, a woman is supposed to perform a sacred bath called a mikveh.
