My birds and bees article is where this stuff really belongs, but I forgot the Asha Sachdev incident while it was being written. This also gives me a chance to prattle on and on about the Age of Discovery. MY Age of Discovery.

Life Processes II was Chapter 8 (or 9) in our Biology textbook (Central Board of Secondary Education, 1990) while I was in Std. IX in Madras. LP I dealt with respiration and that sort of shit. Oh wait, did I say shit? No. They saved that for the sequel - LP II was dedicated to reproduction and excretion. We always used to joke about how we never got to do practicals on "certain topics" from LP II. (For all you dirty minds out there - we were referring to the reproduction part, we weren't into scheisse videos... yet) High school in Madras in the early 90s was very different from Bombay for me. All of a sudden, girls were off-limits - a taboo, so much so that an especially embarassing punishment for the guys in class was to be forced to sit next to a girl on her bench because the guys were caught talking in class or something. Our superegos were developing, and this sort of stuff really affected us. To add insult to injury, our class teacher, who was also our Biology/Health Education teacher, (We basically ended up learning the same shit in both courses, and we would have to be tested twice on the same topics everytime exams came around. Not that I'm complaining, it was always good to get good marks on Health Education without having to study much for it.) LOVED to take advantage of the awkwardness that had suddenly cropped up between the gals and guys. In retrospect, I think it had to do more with embarrassing us BEFORE we had a chance to embarrass her.

For example, I'm sure a lot of teachers have to deal with giggling and lewd comments when they have to teach sex education. Our class teacher had no such thing going on, because she would call us out and embarrass us before we could even think of commenting on anything she was saying. One trick was calling on male students to draw diagrams of the female reproductive system and vice versa. Another effective one was to misspell terms on purpose - scortral sacs instead of scrotal sacs and mensuration instead of menstruation (Damn, she was good! We were studying mensuration in Mathematics that same year, and that only added to our confusion and the mystery of sexual reproduction!) - but heaven help whoever called her on her spelling mistakes. If guy X stands up to inform her that there are two t's in menstruation, she would raise one eyebrow, give him an evil smile, and say, "Soooo! Looks like you are doing a lot of research on these things, ah? If you spent only as much time chasing studies instead of chasing girls and getting distracted, you would improve your marks by a lot..." Hey, better him than us, and we would be laughing at him, too. Poor bastard. But one warning was enough. She could do anything she wanted in class, write and say anything she pleased, no one would correct her about sexual reproduction EVER. That was the kind of psychological conditioning we went through. No wonder some of us had to resort to certain reference materials purchased on  Mount Road sidewalks later on.

During one of these enigmatic classes on the human body's more private functions, she started talking about the female reproductive system and said something about how the walls bleed once approximately every month to get rid of unused stuff, and that don't happen when the egg be fertilized. She explained what happens, and then started a sentence with, "During these days of the menstrual cycle, or periods, women..."

And all of a sudden, the classroom, usually moderately-lit during the hot Madras afternoons, became dazzling bright. I heard choral music and saw a group of Mallu Christian women and men dressed in white robes start singing, Allelujah! Allelujah! Allelujah! I saw the Mallu history teacher James from my school in Bombay with his guitar, singing his favourite soft song that had the nonsensical lyrics, "Para roo rah, para roo rah" And a portal opened at the top of the blackboard (right where the apple-polishing kids usually scrawl in the day's date and some stupid proverb or moral or thought-of-the-day). We zoom into this portal to a younger me, about two years younger, watching some 70s Hindi movie (Swarag Aur Narak?) at home with some grown-ups and my brothers. This movie stars Jeetendra, Sulakshana Pandit (I think) as Swarag, apparently, and Asha Sachdev as... well. Jeetendra dumps Sulaksha Pandit for the "classier" (read modern, westernized, and therefore, according to Bollywood, UNCULTURED and BAD. No wonder she is the Narak in the movie.) Asha Sachdev. Jeetu and Asha Sachdev are a live-in couple and are shown enjoying life as Sulakshana Pandit eats the blows of every door. (Dar-dar ki thokrein khaati hai) After a few songs and maybe even a scene at a disco, Jeetu comes back home one day to find Asha Sachdev disturbed. He asks her what the problem is.

Jeetu: Arrey, hua kya?
Asha Sachdev: I... I... I miss my periods. [sic]
Jeetu (starts smiling): Kya! Iska matlab... iska matlab... ke main baap banne wala hoon!?

...And my 12 year-old, VII or VIII Std. mind tries to process this information:
What the hell does that mean? I miss my periods? I guess that happens when you are pregnant? But what does it mean?

Zoom out of the portal and come back to the IX Std. classroom where Sugirtha Jaising is now talking about menopause (sounds like tropopause) and I'm not paying any attention because I have independently made the connection - things click into place. I achieve true nirvana, knowledge. I beam with inner peace for a femtosecond. Then, I realize that Asha Sachdev's character screwed up. There's a difference between saying "I missed my period" and "I miss my periods", and I think Asha Sachdev either said she's going through menopause, or she just plan hates those days when she's not a blood-belching vagina. I shake my head. How can you portray a westernized character if you can't even get your grammar straight? I smile to myself, imagining Asha Sachdev really feel bad about not having her period every day. Wait, am I smiling on the outside, too?

Too late, Sugirtha finds out I'm displaying a grin, and goes, "Sundar, what are you laughing about? Maybe you want to come sit with the girls on the first bench and share it with them?"

D-Oh!