Menstruation has been a taboo in India where lack of awareness around this topic paves way for misinformation and reluctance on the side of young females to reach out to others for their problems. In a country where we celebrate Kamakhya Dev, the menstruating goddess, there is little open talk on the issue in the society. Aditi Gupta, a 34-year-old engineering graduate and a New Media Design post-graduate from National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad came up with a comic called "Menstrupedia" to address the lack of awareness of menstruation and break myths around the taboo.
Talking about her own experience, Gupta says as a child too embarrassed to purchase sanitary napkins and discuss menstrual troubles. A large portion of her adolescence was spent figuring out anatomy and dealing with her menstrual complications on her own. Though she started menstruating at the age of 12, she couldn't gather basic knowledge on the matter till the age of 15. Instead of going to the shopkeeper for purchasing a sanitary napkin because of the associated societal taboo, she would resort to using cloth and rags during her period. Indian households associate periods with impurity and disgust leading to young menarches rummaging for information from unreliable sources which may result in a wrong diagnosis and serious complications. During her time in college, she suffered from unbearable dysmenorrhea (period cramps), Gupta's husband, Tuhin an alumnus of NID as well would search the internet for relief solutions to cramps only to witness meagre information available in the public domain for the same. This prompted the couple to take the subject as part of her final project for which she won a Ford Foundation scholarship. Along the way after extensive research with doctors, and collating with schoolgirls, the idea of a comic strip and guide came with three young girls and a doctor as the main characters. She put up the comic books on a website (www. tales of change. in). The response was favourable but the project had to be shelved for lack of funds. But what emerged was the need for a website to target a much larger set of users.
After year-long research, Gupta with the support of Paul and Rajat Mittal (who provided the technological support) launched Menstrupedia.com. This is an illustrated reference guide that provides medically correct information related to menstruation in an easy-to-understand manner. The site has received an overwhelming response with 70,000 visitors a month who spend an average of 5 minutes on it. Menstrupedia raised an amount at the beginning of their project through crowd-funding, Rs.5.15 lakh in 2013 to produce comics. After that, the company has been quite sustainable and re-investing their profits back into the firm. A lot of the visitors on the website said that 80% of the information was new to them. It brought home the fact that even educated people lacked awareness. During the very start, they got several readers including some young women and men coming and sharing experiences with us about the lack of clarity around hygiene and sanitation of women. Their target group were three categories of young people: Young people who haven't started their periods and do not know what menstruation means; who have just started their periods and are curious about menstruation and young people who have had their periods, regularly and know what menstruation is but they are curious about the various customs followed around it.
Menstrupedia provides a user-friendly guide to menstruation, hygiene and puberty and helps break myths associated with them. The website aims to present this information in a culturally sensitive and an easy-to-understand way through digital media. The website contains various comic books, blogs, Q&A section and a Learn section. Menstrupedia has been used by more than 6000 schools, benefiting over 10,00,000 girls alone in India in over 14 languages. Globally, the comic has been used in more than 18 countries as a communication and education tool. Coupled with discussions and pieces of training around menstrual hygiene, the comic has become an advocacy tool for us and many others on many global platforms. The Menstrupedia organization is working with five state governments namely Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Uttrakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka. Other than India, the book is locally printed in 5 other countries; Nepal, Uruguay, South America, China and Hungary. 'Hello Periods' video and its tutorial which is a free tool are available in 9 languages. It has started several campaigns in collaboration with Whisper India such as Touch the Pickle movement in collaboration with many actresses like Shraddha Kapoor, Parineeti Chopra, Kalki Koechlin, Neha Dhupia, Mandira Bedi among others. Though being received with taboo by certain religious organizations, her comic books have been used by NGOs like Protsahan, Munshi Jagannath Bhagwan Smriti Sansthan, Instincts, Kanha along with two Buddhists monasteries in Ladakh.
In 2015, Aditi was invited to a TED talk in Bangalore. Her talk was so well received that at the end of it, she got a standing ovation. This talk proved to be a tremendous success as it provided her with an international platform to showcase her work and dreams. In 2014, Aditi was included in the prestigious Forbes India Under 30 ranking as well.
In an interview on Menstrupedia's future, Aditi says, "In the next five years we want to translate the comic in 15 languages other than Hindi and English. We want to design workshop kits for educators to conduct effective menstrual awareness workshops. The online illustrated guide on Menstrupedia would be made extensive to cover all aspects of menstruation and, finally, introduce the comic in at least one country other than India."
Piece by-
Fuhaar Bandhu
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