Book Lunch
Namaste, once again.
My heart is full today.
I stand here with gratitude, emotion, and a little doubt—because this book did not begin with a pen.
It began with a trauma and pain.
A trauma created by silence, shame, fear, restrictions around menstruation or menstrual discrimination.
What began as a personal struggle slowly became a question, then a research journey, then a PhD—and eventually, a global claim for Menstrual Dignity.
The Crimson Truth is a part of that journey.
For generations, half of population of this planet has live in a silent burden.
We have whispered about menstruation.
A natural biological process—the very process through which life continues—was made to feel dirty, impure, and invisible.
But menstruation is not the problem.
The discrimination built around menstruation is.
This book is my attempt to pull back that curtain for menstrual discrimination and ask a simple but uncomfortable question:
Why should something so natural require an apology?
My PhD gave academic legitimacy to a struggle that began with lived experience.
But the real knowledge came from the people who opened their hearts and shared their menstrual stories with me.
To every participant, every supervisor, every colleague, and every person who trusted me with their story:
Thank you.
Your stories are not merely data
They are knowledge
They are resistance.
They are the truth.
And that is why The Crimson Truth is not only my book.
It belongs to every menstruator whose voice was silenced, whose dignity was questioned, and whose experience was told to remain invisible.
I am especially grateful to Prof. Sanghammitra and Prof. Sunita for believing in this work, for walking beside me, and for giving me this beautiful gift of collaboration and bonding.
And today, with all my heart, I dedicate this moment to my father, Devi Prasad Paudel, and my late mother, Ganga Maya Paudel.
They put wings on me.
They gave me the courage to fly beyond the boundaries I was given, to question what I was told to accept, and to carry the call for menstrual dignity from my own life to the world.
This book is one dream which I carrying for decades
Until my last breath, I want to see a world where no menstruator has to trade dignity for culture, silence for acceptance, or freedom for tradition.
A world where menstruation is not hidden
Not feared
Not shamed.
Not punished.
But lived—with dignity.
Because menstrual dignity is not a privilege.
It is human dignity
It is composite outcome of at least four principles of human rights; right to dignity, right to freedom, right to equality and right to non-discrimination
The name on this book may be mine.
But its crimson truth belongs to all of us.
Thank you for being part of this journey.
The book is launched today.
But the struggl
e—and the dream—continues.
Thank you. 🙏
