Azhagunila’s short story விலக்கு spends a day with thirteen-year-old Lavanya, foregrounding her isolation at home and at school because she has not yet gotten her first period. The pressure she feels is largely implicit: classmates casually discuss sanitary pads and boyfriends, while those who have not menstruated are dismissed as “babies,” abruptly stripped of the young adulthood they are eager to claim. Lavanya internalizes this hierarchy, interpreting her stalled body as a social failure. She even suspects her mother of conspiring to keep her a “child” by feeding her பருப்பு சாதம் and withholding fried chicken – foods imagined to either delay or accelerate puberty – revealing how deeply cultural myths about the body shape her understanding of growth and femininity.
The story pointedly refuses transformation or release, culminating instead in a moment of false hope. A stomach ache briefly convinces Lavanya that her body has finally complied, only for the absence of blood to collapse that anticipation into disappointment and rage:
பிறகு கையிலிருந்த குவளையை வீசி எறிய அது சுவரில் பட்டு தண்ணீரை நாலாபக்கமும் சிதறி அடித்தபடி கீழே விழுந்தது. குழாயைத் திறந்துவிட்டவள் கொட்டும் தண்ணீரைப் பார்த்துக்கொண்டே நின்றாள். வயிற்று வலி குறைந்து பசிப்பது போலிருந்தது.
There are no turning points, and that feels deliberate: even earlier, when Lavanya admires another girl’s pimples and facial hair as signs of puberty, what might conventionally be seen as blemishes by teenagers, register as markers of progress for Lavanya:
அவளது சுமாரான முகத்தில் பூவில் இருக்கும் பனித்துளிகள் போலிருந்த குட்டி பருக்களும் உதட்டிற்கு மேலிருந்த பூனை முடியும் லாவண்யாவை ஈர்த்தன.
In this light, விலக்கு shifts meaning – from ritual seclusion during menstruation to a different kind of exclusion before it: a social barring from intimacy, gossip, and legitimacy among her peers. When Lavanya’s mother remarks that she herself got her period at fifteen and predicts that Lavanya may have two more years to wait, the comment lands not as comfort but as devastation, underscoring how girlhood in the story is defined by an aching suspension outside belonging.
Transverse 