Shruti Haasan has opened up about dealing with painful periods and the lack of understanding around menstrual health, revealing that she has often wished men could experience periods too. The actor said she would love to see period leave become a part of work contracts, especially because menstrual pain is often not taken seriously.During a conversation with Soha Ali Khan on her podcast, Shruti spoke about some of the misconceptions surrounding periods and how she has dealt with them personally.“I mean, there’s only one solution to this, and I prayed about it a thousand times that men get periods. And then we’d have, like, period holidays written into our contract.”Soha agreed with Shruti and jokingly suggested that men might even turn it into a competition over the amount of bleeding and the size of tampons.Shruti also revealed that she experiences painful periods because of her diagnosis of PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome). Looking back at the early years of her career, she said she would rarely speak about her periods because she assumed people would not want to discuss the subject.“It’s literally how it started. The first time I told a director, he has a daughter, and he said she also has very bad cramps. It just changed the colour,” said the actor.Elaborating on why she eventually began opening up about her menstrual health, Shruti explained that she realised conversations around physical health could help people understand and accommodate one another better.“Yes, I will do it, but it would be so much more collaborative if you knew what I was going through. And then I noticed, one of my co-stars was like, you know, I’ve had that knee surgery. And they were like, oh okay, so let’s work around this. And I was like, I have my period.”On the work front, Shruti Haasan was last seen in ‘Coolie’ in 2025. She will next feature in ‘Train’, co-starring Vijay Sethupathi, and ‘Aakasamlo Oka Tara’ with Dulquer Salmaan. She has also lent her voice to a song in SS Rajamouli’s upcoming film ‘Varanasi’, which stars Mahesh Babu, Priyanka Chopra and Prithviraj Sukumaran.‘Varanasi’ follows Rudhra as the city of Varanasi faces the threat of an approaching asteroid. The story reportedly spans multiple timelines and continents, with Rajamouli envisioning the project as a globetrotting adventure rooted in Indian cultural themes and drawing from the emotional scale of classic adventure films.