“Having Periods Is common To Meghan Markle And Me,” Says Taapsee Pannu
Mumbai: The Duchess of Sussex, Megan Markle, visited Mumbai in January last year. A couple of months later, she approached an NGO and expressed her desire to come to India, as she didn’t know the menstrual hygiene problems were that grave here.
Now, Taapsee Pannu has joined hands with the same NGO. “Even in a regular middle-class household in Mumbai or Delhi, periods are discussed using figurative gestures and awkward eye contact,” she points out, saying it’s important to address big cities first and then move onto smaller towns and villages.
She adds, “Having periods is common to Meghan Markle, me and every other woman in the world. With great power comes great responsibility, and if people like her contribute and support this kind of initiative, it widens its reach, as she is in a power position.”
Even before children hit their adolescent age, they should be told about the menstrual cycle. “There’s a chapter about menstruation in biology, but by the time you deal with it, you have already heard about it from sources in a weird way, and you’re hushing the topic and getting awkward in the class,” she sighs. “The first step should be to talk about it, as a regular period determines the health of a female. It is because we don’t talk about it, a lot of health hazards are not addressed,” she points out.
Chemist shops in our country either give the sanitary napkins wrapped in newspaper or in an opaque black bag. “For the longest time, I made my mother buy me sanitary pads because growing up even I thought it was not normal to carry it around openly and it had to be smuggled home. Today, I have the courage to tell the chemist not to wrap it up. The change will come when everyone starts doing this,” she asserts.
She also says that making films on periods is not the only way forward, we need to normalize this topic in every film. Period talk can be incorporated organically in the films, she says.
On a work front Pannu is all set for her upcoming film Mission Mangal the film stars an ensemble cast of Akshay Kumar, Vidya Balan, Nithya Menen, Kirti Kulhari, Sharman Joshi, H. G. Dattatreya and Sonakshi Sinha.
Directed by Jagan Shakti the film is scheduled to be theatrically released in India on 15 August 2019.
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