Book: THE MENSTRUAL COUPÉ
Author: Shahina K. Rafiq
Published by: Hachette
Price: Rs 499
Translated into English by Priya K. Nair, Shahina K. Rafiq’s book houses a series of twenty-three short stories that weave together intense personal narratives of women across ages, castes and cultures. The femininities suppressed by generations of misogyny scream at us from the pages of the book as we encounter women who are powerless to live life as their true selves.
Almost every story picks a girl or a woman as its central voice. The problems narrated would seem regular, almost mundane. They would make readers think much ado was being made about nothing. However, the reader must sit up and reconsider when a wife, whose husband was away for two weeks, muses, “[h]is absence was an occasion for celebration.” Many wives are spoken of in the stories. A wife forced to house a pet cow because it caught her husband’s fancy has to live with the stink and the filth the animal brings into her home; she has to bear the taunts and the insults flung by the neighbours — comments that range from hygiene to religion in tone. The last straw is when their child is affected by a grave allergy due to the fleas and the ticks from the animal. Another wife is given talaq because she talked back to her husband. Though he regrets his decision instantly, he can only get her back after she is wed to another and subsequently divorced by her second husband. She is tossed to and fro like a garment being laundered. When she comes back, she is armed with “The Book”, a symbol that suggests she will garner strength by using it to turn her situation.
A few of the stories also harbour male perspectives. These too are designed to reveal how the male gazes at the female, trapping her in a cocoon of subservience, neglect and torture. The upright Raghavan, fending for his family since his father died, is given an opportunity to find recognition of his sporting ability at an international level. But the sound of applause comes to him as he is wrapped in the arms of another woman, while his wife waits for him at home. The stoic Sandeep, earnest in his love for Lekha, dramatically turns into a depressed recluse when she honestly declares to him that she loves another. He is unable to accept that he is secondary.
In almost all the tales, women seek the company of other women, finding solace and affirmation from sisters, friends, mothers, grandmothers. The final story is set in a real coupé, a busy train compartment for ladies, which bustles with the collective energy of dozens of women of all ages, some going to school, others to work. Their discussion focuses on the single common thing that affects them all — menstruation. As they recount memories of their first periods, the cramps and the pain suffocate us all. Not one story is easy, not one memory is without trauma. From amidst their talks of “Thirandukalayanam”, seven days of untouchability, outhouses for menstruating women, and hidden meals during Ramadan as they were too impure to fast at that time, rises a strange solidarity, a sisterhood; and it is this very sisterhood that is the underlying message of The Menstrual Coupé.
Despite being a translation, Priya Nair deftly captures the tone and the intent of the Malayalam original by Rafiq. The flow of words can be jarring, just like the din in a heavily crowded room of dissenters. That, however, is not accidental. Reading a book like this during this time is bitterly relevant. The Menstrual Coupé is a must-read, especially for young boys preparing to enter the world as men.
