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The changing sensory experience of menstruation in central Kerala, India

ABSTRACT This paper enucleates menstruation as a sensory experience within and across three generations of women in central Kerala. Drawing heavily on the collected ethnographic data, it establishes that in central Kerala, until the second half of the 20th century, the practices surrounding menarche rites were employed as useful channels to aid a girl in internalizing the sensory order that the society deemed fit for a woman. Similarly, monthly menstruation was marked by compulsory sensory restraint to teach her the feminine virtues of moderation and obedience. However, this has undergone considerable transformation in present-day Kerala, owing to a variety of factors such as the community reform movements of the 19th century, the advent of certain aspects of consumer culture and the introduction of a modern, medical discourse of menstruation. For instance, a short analysis of the everyday sensory practices of contemporary women surrounding menstruation reveals a concurrence with the scheme of modernity to render menstruation and menstruating bodies as invisible. All of this emphasizes the fact that a woman’s sensorium has always been contingent upon the way in which her senses are socialized through menstrual practices, albeit differently at different points of time, in the history of central Kerala.