Don't read any further...

if you are the squeamish sort, or, male (not that there is anything wrong with that).

Generally, its awful to have your period when:
(a) You are in someone else's house
(b) You are travelling for work
(c) You are running the half-marathon
(d) You have the GRE exam on a hot Chennai day in a place with no fans

The jugglery involved, the associated pain that you have to mask, the sundry aches that surface with a characteristic lack of logic or reason, and, most importantly, the overall icky-ness of it all, are best dealt with in your usual home, and routine.

So that way I am glad. This place is home. Things are set-up. No travelling (yet). Routine is busy but, well, routine. The marathon is tucked away in a happy place in the back of my mind. I still have a couple of financial transactions associated with the marathon-fund-raising, but else, all done, washed hands off. The extreme craziness that was January 2009, bringing the new year in with a bang, so to speak, is behind me. So bring it on.

I have heard it mentioned that Indra messed up - did something underhand. So women were accursed to have the monthlies. What is the connection? I have always wondered. But the truth is here to stay. On some levels you derive satisfaction from knowing that
(a) You are not pregnant (assuming you don't want to be).
(b) You don't have to deal with any 'traditions' involving something or the other meant to subjugate and belittle you, you, woman with your secretions.
(c) You lose that tummy fat for about three seconds.

But generally you stare at the husband and other male members of the family who are going both guns firing and trying to egg you on for a screen-roll in the evening basketball game, and, knowing you, do not allow you to use this as an excuse (lest you start unreasonably screaming or display other such mood alterations they have learned to anticipate and fob off). You feel wistful. Oh. You think of your age. You subtract it from fifty, on your fingers (ha! No! I would be ashamed to do that on my fingers. Its fifteen goddammit. Back off now). You sigh deeply.

Mum recommends yoga, calcium, iron, multivitamins, milk, and generally gets that pleading note in her voice. A note that expresses her complete confidence that I am 'ignoring my health' as she likes to put it. 'Where does she have the time?' she will be telling her sisters. Okay mum, I don't have random amounts of free time on my hands because I don't want to have it. I am a busy-body, and hello, so are you, okay? Let us remind you that you are 'retired' and 'sixty two' and generally should not be climbing on top of the kitchen counter to clean on top of the cabinets. Even if you crossed menopause several years ago and don't have that to deal with any more.

So that is that. I am here in my verdant home. The TV remote has been located and Aditya the big huge cable guy with a funnily long body (and alarmingly short legs) has come and gone. Another guy smelling of after-shave and wearing his socks around the home has drilled and drilled and inserted wires into some ugly plastic 'pattis' on the wall. I have pattis criss-crossing the walls everywhere now, like a jungle of underground rodent burrows. But still, homes home, even if its not my own. Friends have visited and though I was in the extreme throes of a headache, it was splendid to have them over, as ever.

Let me go breakfast and eat my calcium. Oh wait. Iron supplements after a light meal (i.e. breakfast). And Calcium after a heavy one (i.e. lunch or dinner). Keep it in mind ladies.