Twoberty

The Second Coming of my early 20s

I was watching Twitches on Disney channel when my mother told me I had gotten my period. She knew before me, not by the magic of motherhood, but because I had failed to notice anything different about my underpants before leaving them for a wash that morning. I did not know what to do with this information. No cramps and no knowledge, just an unnoticed trail of blood. I bled for two days that month, and no more. I thought I will always have to wear a Whisper Ultra from that day on, waiting for my period to come. I told this to another 14 year old friend, who had been menstruating for a year, and was able to put this information out of circulation there and then. Thank god, who knows how many bums I would have rashed that day.

I remember feeling differently about my body once it had happened. For months afterwards, this knowledge of possible blood remained with me like a birthmark on my forehead- all white pants, dates for exams, conversations with boys were stained with anticipation. Just like that, I was supposed to be a different person, entering the carnival of the uterus without any preparation, and no tools to tame it. I was in Class 5. We were taught about puberty in Class 8. Puberty, it was called. Puberty- a receipt for normalcy, a name for an affliction that was not a disease, not a miracle, just the hypothalamus doing its thing, a name for my disbelief at my body going rogue.

I am told that menstruation is a rite of passage for those who experience it. It’s when you go from being someone’s child to completing the process of learning how to be a woman, someone’s woman. When leaving your hair open begins to take on a meaning, the hair on your legs become ugly, and you need to buy something that no longer looks like a little boy’s white vest. When you should move your arms less, your legs lesser, and your eyes not at all. This is when you might make stories with guardrails, trim your ambition to fit your new body, and paste a man and a child at the centre of your fabric. When your girl’s body starts growing into a woman’s, you learn how to pause the growing of everything else, how to be a match for a world that shrinks in comparison, unable to contain you, threatening to drop. 

As a gender professional in the development sector, I have seen this shift unfold for more girls than I’d like to acknowledge. It’s the youngest girls with single digit ages that are the most ambitious. 9 year olds, waiting to put on new uniforms that they see on TV in police stations, the border, the hospitals, foolishly seeing their young bodies in those of men, taking flights to countries whose names they can’t spell, travelling for weeks on end, and working on imagined overtime. When they’re 13-14, they’ve toned themselves down to being teachers with “manageable” working hours, and at 19, they’re not sure if they will ever “work”. But of course they do. They work on dreams and plans they inherit from strangers, straighten their hair for flimsy tic tacs which wouldn’t otherwise stick, study hard to gain “good to have” grades. They work on keeping themselves quiet, and listening with invisible anger to maintain peace on the dining table. They work on a spotless disappearance which by now they’re skilled at- no trace of blood, no expressions for cramps, no signs of discomfort. We’re doing just fine, no no it’s not that bad, how very nice of you to ask.

Puberty for girls then is a name for the realisation that your body has a mind of its own, that it can bleed at inconvenient times and sprout hair and sweat patches where they shouldn’t be. A name for the wonder and disbelief you experience when for the first time, your body sends something out of its own accord, and you're left to clean it up and make sense of it all as suggestions and opinions pile up around you.

The Second Coming

Is there also a name for the first time you realise what your mind is capable of? Something that slips off as scientifically from your tongue as puberty does? Something that puts in one sentence the thrill of understanding for the first time- you can say no, you can ask why, you can walk away. You can reverse the training you gulped down with every Meftal Spas, and release the laughter and volume trapped in your lungs. You can talk to someone if you so wish, and then maybe also be with them for a long time, yes even at night. You can loiter and earn a living, you can wander and make a life. You can want to work harder than you should and travel for weeks on end. It’s the day you find once again the frog that had leapt out of your body at 12, 13, or 15, and reinstate it, finding it grown, hearty and leaping, now inside of you.

I do not have a name for this yet, so I am choosing to call it Twoberty.

Now since I have coined this term, I must define it as well as a good writer should.

Twoberty is a stage of life when you still give a fuck about a lot of things, but learn that it’s possible not to. You learn that it is possible to narrow the circle of your cares, and nurture the circles of your imagination. It is a revival of your childlike energy when your body is no longer that of a child, and what a great combination that is! Unlike puberty, Twoberty can come at any age and take any amount of time to unfold its full impact. The changes that Twoberty produces are hard to decipher as they’re not all physical. Some of them of course are- you start seeing pyjamas and other comfortable clothing appear on your body, and the life cycle of hair on your legs becomes longer. If you start taking care of your skin, it is not focussed on getting that one pimple out of the way, it’s just to remember how soft your skin feels after moisturising. In the heat of a great conversation or in the presence of a terrific view, you could forget that there’s a crack in your butt into which the kameez, skirt, blue dress might slide, and when someone tells you, you might find it more difficult than before to feel embarrassed.

It is the long time over which you learn to listen to yourself and sometimes take a walk when you were wanted home. It is when you serve yourself a bigger portion, and watch TV while eating dinner. This is most likely the result of some mental cycles which reverse completely after responding to miscellaneous stimuli. You notice this reversal because you start saying “yes” a lot to yourself, and “no” a lot more to others.

Credits: Touching Photographs

All of this can sound like a good thing, but those who are going through it will tell you it takes a lot of work. On most days your brain is full of an anticipation of disaster, a list of things that can go wrong, and contingency plans for when your comebacks are labelled as having gone “too far”. You can end up spending an endless amount of time negotiating with yourself, calculating how much you can expand to still fit. You journal, choosing your battles with no guidance on what the right choice is, and for how much longer you will have to keep choosing. Every now and then, you create WhatsApp groups with friends also going through Twoberty, learning that there are no drugs for this pain. You exchange memes on patriarchy instead, and that cheers you up a little. You learn to rely on yourself a lot.

You learn that Twoberty is exhausting, but being who you’re not is just worse.

The circle of people who love you the most struggle to understand you, and accommodate you into templates they have cherished so far. You know it’s not their fault, but now you remember that it’s not yours either. Regardless of this, some days, the “good girl” threatens to come back, and the space inside of you contracts again. The good thing is, when Twoberty hits you and your body remembers how much more it can move, it doesn’t let you forget. You are infected forever, and that’s supposed to be a good thing.

I think my Twoberty came somewhere between 21-23. I think my mother is going through it right now. A lot of women I know from university or work seem to be getting it anywhere between 21-30. Unlike the baton of puberty which usually passes from older people to younger ones, Twoberty is a free flowing affliction, almost a virus. You can catch and learn it from anyone regardless of who they are. 

Now what else is there to say? Do you think you’ve understood it?

If puberty tells, here’s what you will do, Twoberty is curious and asks- so what are you going to do? What are you going to do with yourself today?

What’s happening at Khwaabghar?

Last week, Khwaabghar launched a series of events in Delhi called Khwaabghar goes to town! We had a terrific time hosting the first part at Greenr in GK 1, where a community of readers, artists, and thinkers came together to their find their match! Follow our Instagram page for updates on the next editions, and other upcoming events. The handle is khwaabgharstories.

We also concluded our first writers’ circle last month and the next edition is due to start in November last week. Email me at manmeetkaur0312@gmail.com to learn more and sign up!