A younger cousin in our neighborhood got her first period today, which triggered vivid flashbacks to the absolute cinematic chaos of my own first experience back in 5th grade. It was the night of Ramnavmi. In our household, Ramnavmi meant staying up all night in the prayer room for continuous bhajan and puja. I was sitting cross-legged next to my mother and aunt when I felt a sudden warmth and thought I had accidentally peed. Being ten years old and half asleep, I quietly slipped away to the washroom, changed into fresh shorts, and crawled into bed. An hour later, my mother bursts into the bedroom in sheer hysteria, shaking me awake like the house was on fire. I was 95% asleep, stumbling blindly with my eyes shut, while she ushered me into the bathroom chanting: "Ghabrao mat, kuch nahi hua hai, sab theek hai!" She wasn't prepared, so she improvised with folded cotton cloth because she was too shy to ask the other aunts in the house for sanitary pads. The next morning, my dad found out. Without a single ounce of awkwardness, he brought home two giant bars of Dairy Milk, handed me his phone, and let me spend the entire afternoon curled up on his arm watching Shinchan. Then came the absurd part: my mother became deeply convinced that getting periods at age 10 would permanently stunt my vertical growth. She dragged me across four different cities to six different gynecologists, pleading with doctors to prescribe hormone blockers to pause my cycle so her daughter could grow taller. I'll never forget the first doctor making me lie on the examination couch and asking, "Beta, kya problem hai?" and ten-year-old me bawling: "Mujhe nahi pata, mumma se pucho!" Desi parenting in the 2000s was truly an Olympic sport of panic.