A dejected Kalpana dragged her feet back home after tutoring her favourite student Ananya, a student at Bishop Green school. Ananya’s family celebrated the Ganesh festival for 5 days and Ananya had been pestering Kalpana to come visit. She obviously couldn’t because of her periods. However, it made Kalpana wonder… a meaningless practice of not participating in holy or divine activities only because of a bodily function over which she had no control. Was it the Gods who had decided this? Or was it God’s agents who decided that a bleeding woman was impure, untouchable and disgusting? She knew the answer, but suddenly when Ananya questioned her innocently why she had not attended the Ganesha festival at her place, she felt like she too was propounding the same old blind rituals.

The final day of the festival was now upon the city and devotees rushed to the few remaining pandals to catch a glimpse of their favourite deity and ask for their deepest desires to come true. Kalpana had a wish to pray for too… but she was being denied access to the God. Quite by design… this month, her period had arrived exactly on the day of the festival and was still looming. 11 days of the bloody mess, it felt like there was an elaborate plot in place to keep her away from the God. Had she sinned or committed some mistake which had angered the God, she pondered?

Crossing over the threshold of her house Kalpana felt a palpable negative vibe in the air. Tai-ajji was absent from her routine perch – the rusty iron chair was empty and the rosary beads strewn across the seat in a callous manner. Aai was scrambling about in the kitchen, while Sudya anna was helping with rinsing the freshly cut banana and taro leaves for the final day’s naivedya. Just as Kalpana was about to poke her head into the kitchen and ask for the menu, Tai-ajji came tottering out of the bedroom with an accusatory finger wagging in Kalpana’s direction – “How many times do I have to tell you, stay out of the kitchen during your period? Don’t even cast your shadow on the modaks and kheer-puri for Ganpati.”

Kalpana could feel her world come tumbling down sounding like a thousand glass bottles falling from a high shelf. Her eyes brimmed with tears as she opened her mouth to respond to Tai-ajji, but no words came out. Aai didn’t know who to pacify in the moment – her daughter, asking her not to take her grandmother’s words to heart or Tai-ajji, assuring her that Kalpana would cause no harm to the proceedings. Sudya anna continued his task dedicatedly almost as if he had heard nothing. Kalpana didn’t need any words to understand that she was not welcome there, not tonight anyway.

She dashed out the front door, taking two or three steps at a time, tears rushing down her hot cheeks. Her hair tie had come undone and loose strands of hair stuck to her wet face and sweaty neck. She didn’t stop until she reached the ground floor and then the end of her lane. She had managed to stifle the tears and tie her hair up again, but the pain inside now manifested as quick unrelenting steps that turned into a long walk. Eventually she didn’t quite realize when she had reached the safed-pul beach side. The thronging crowd at the beach with all the little and large Ganeshas who had come for the final visarjan threw her out of her painfilled stupor. Her heart grew lighter as she now witnessed Lord Ganesha, as idol after idol paraded in front of her very eyes before they were hoisted on to the dinghy boats to be taken a few feet into the sea and then immersed in the raging waters.

This is part 3 of a 4 part series written for Blogchatter‘s Half Marathon.