Periods, Pyaar And Patriarchy

Chapter One

What does a girl want?

Shweta looked at the empty buildings for the last time. This was her last day in college, she had graduated. At twenty-one, she was at the age where both boys and girls have the un-erasable charm in their existences, irrespective of what they look like. Just out of puberty and teenage angst, the newfound world-shattering courage at the threshold of youth. She's beautiful, in the way all of us are, not in the shapes of our bodies, the inches of our waists, the clarity of your skin, or the angle of your jawline. Beautiful, because she exists, so full of life and absolutely unaware of her own power.

The bittersweet feeling clenches in her heart and she remembers the pavement where she had first met Sanskriti, one of her very best friends in college. It still felt disloyal to call Sanskriti her best friend; when she had been sixteen, she had never dreamt of finding a friend as wonderful as her high school best friend Riddhi. Sanskriti, the girl in question, was standing next to her. A tall girl with a very skinny frame invited comments like "are you on a diet?" from jealous classmates and "you need to eat something" from her various aunts.

But Sanskriti, standing at a proud 5'8 held all 24 inches of her waist with absolute dignity. She was something of a budding social media star, an Instagram influencer who promoted body positivity. Her posts ranged from sun-kissed selfies to wooden chopping boards with three sliced apples placed on them.

With a proud following of fifteen thousand, Sanskriti wasn't your local 'pretty girl' who dimpled 'good genes' when you asked her the secret of her beauty but went on surgery vacations. A little too lanky; with absolutely uneven teeth and a unibrow that parlor aunties sniggered at. But none of these things had ever been anything to deter her spirit, and her hostel wall was plastered with Emma Watson's quotes.

"Yaar." Sanskriti drawls, as she loops her arm through Shweta's, "I'm going to miss you."

"I know," Shweta says, forcing the bittersweet feeling away and a smile on her face. "But don't be all sentimental right now. We still need to meet Aditya and you know how he gets."

Aditya was their classmate and he completed their tight-knit trio. A charming guy, who got on remarkably well with all genders and their honorary girlfriend. About as tall as Sanskriti and his hair tied in a small bun with strands always falling out it to frame his face, Aditya was the musician in the little group. Infinitely blessed with the talent to play almost any instrument, Aditya often regretted his decision of having opted for the more practical option of History Honors as opposed to the unconventional Music Major his heart had been set upon.

It wasn't that they didn't have other friends; they walked in a circle of around fifteen. But the impersonal feel of a large group had caused them to seek each other out and once they had, they'd been inseparable.

Shweta and Sanskriti had been introduced to Aditya in a Whatsapp Group Chat consisting of fifteen members, formed in the first year with a rather courageous title of 'Friends Forever'. Later, when the trio had their own little WhatsApp group called the 'The Tramp and his Garden Hoes'; they'd snickered at the name of the first group. "How can you even confirm we're going to be friends forever in the first year?" Aditya had asked, making both Shweta and Sanskriti giggle.

And there had ensued fights and scandals in the large group. The who's dating who conspiracy theories that always circulated and who would look good with who. There had been some interesting characters in the large group as well; The Intelligent Homophobe who topped all the exams but conveniently forgot about the decriminalization of Section 377. There were two Emo Freaks- a boy and a girl, who never seemed to have grown out of the high school phase of posting grammatically incorrect quotes about long-lost lovers. Then there were the usual faintly sexist boys who said they were feminists but circulated jokes about girls and their driving skills. There were the very generic faintly racist girls who commented three heart emojis on each other's Instagram posts but never hesitated to ask their friends to delete photos because she looked too tan.