Survival of the clueless
#22: A 100-word autofiction on the beginnings of a sex education
Survival of the clueless
Middle of seventh grade, my best friend Saira arrived at school, sobbing, “I have cancer!” Hindi movie scenes in which the hero melodramatically dies of cancer flooded me. I started crying too.
Someone must’ve called our no-nonsense school nurse, Sister Pam, because soon she was upon us, “What’s this racket?”
“Saira has can-can-cer…,” I sobbed.
Undeterred, Sister Pam turned to Saira, “Who told you?”
“No one, b-but I bleed… in the toilet,” Saira wailed.
I wailed louder.
Sister Pam slapped her forehead, “Bah! It’s your period. Follow me!”
Saira and I halted our wailing, and ran agape after Sister Pam.
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reena | 12.08.23
Hope you liked that. It’s a piece of auto-fiction inspired by events when I was growing up in the 70s/80s in India. There was no internet and we had zero access to books or information on matters related to the birds and the bees. Much confusion and distress — and hilarity (in retrospect) resulted.
Aside…
Almost exactly a year ago I wrote “Rogue seeds of transformation” where I said:
If you know me today, you know I love to cook and often spend happy hours lost in the kitchen. But if you’d said that to the freshly arrived graduate student back then she would have scoffed at your presumptuous (she might even claim, sexist) presumption. “Why? Because I’m a girl?” she would interrogate. That girl vehemently resisted all attempts to be “domesticated”. Kitchens and cooking were to be avoided at all costs. They were “jails for girls and women''….
Read the full post here:
It’s a post I personally love because it’s about a significant internal journey and about the discovery of my culinary guru, Madhur Jaffrey - the woman who brought Indian cooking into American kitchens, much like what Julia Child did for French.
Madhur Jaffrey of course has no idea what she did for me but I continue to pay tribute to her in my kitchen.
I was recently thrilled to discover that the very book that I learned how to cook from, which was her very first book on Indian cooking, has now been released on its 50th anniversary in a beautiful, new edition. Photos below.
Madhur Jaffrey of course has no idea what she did for me but I continue to pay tribute to her in my kitchen. If you ever want to seriously learn how to cook Indian food this is the book to begin with.
It's a magnificent and very realistic post, based on the reality of a country where sex education and female sexuality still seem to be a huge taboo. The poet Rupi Kaur talks a lot about this. Thanks for the brave post Reena
This is a wonderful post, Reena.
Sidebar: I wonder if writers truly understand, or appreciate, how their words can affect others - stories or cookbooks, poems or pontifications. There is a certain immortality in that, one which I find by turns soothing AND daunting.
Thanks for reminding me of that...