Rachana Dubey (BOMBAY TIMES; January 11, 2018)

He’s the man who invented one of the world’s first low-cost machines used for making sanitary napkins. In fact, he even wore one himself to experience what it is like to wear a sanitary pad. Padmashri Arunachalam Muruganantham’s story is the inspiration behind Akshay Kumar’s Republic Day outing, Pad Man. A school dropout from Coimbatore, Arunachalam decided to challenge a taboo and provide sanitary napkins at a minimal cost to women across the country, who couldn’t afford to buy them, especially those in rural areas. Born to a handloom worker, he was familiar with the workings of a machine and also understood how cotton should be utilized in pads. The asli Pad Man, who now employs 21,000 women in his pad-making initiative, speaks to BT about the stigma around menstruation and how it has been a prolonged battle for him, but one that’s worth it. Excerpts…

Your life has inspired Akshay Kumar’s character in Pad Man. Prior to that,his wife Twinkle Khanna wrote about you in one of her books. What prompted you to open up about your life to the couple?
Before Twinkle Khanna approached me for her book, there were many directors who were pursuing me to make a film but they were all men, and I wondered how I would discuss the topic with them. I wasn’t sure how many would even understand what I was talking about. Fortunately, Twinkle came to me with the idea and I gave her a lot of time for her book first, and then for the film. I was a little apprehensive about how Hindi films work because sometimes, you hear one story, write another and shoot something else. But Twinkle assured me that they wouldn’t change the story and menstruation would be the focal point of the narrative. I was clear that the film would have to deal with the problem openly and not mix masala with it, which would make the entire exercise useless. I wanted the hero to talk about menstruation.

Did you spend time with Akshay on the set?
Akshay is a very sensitive man. He wanted to know everything about me, like my dressing style and the way I walk. For months, he chatted with me about my life. He insisted that I visit the location and watch him closely. He would even ask me for my opinion on whether he had given a good take. Till I met him, I never thought an actor could be that down to earth.

Pad Man touches upon a topic that was always relevant, but is now open to discussion, thanks to the changing approach of young Indians towards social issues. There’s a marked degree of openness in the dialogue around women, their sanitation and hygiene-related needs. How do you perceive this transition?
Back in 2004, only five per cent of women in India used sanitary pads. The conversation opened right then. A few years later, a survey was conducted and the number had increased, but only marginally. Women in a lot of remote areas used rags, newspapers, dry leaves and ash during their menstrual cycle, which made India the country with the second highest number of cervical cancer cases. Despite the presence of multinational companies that manufacture pads, these issues were not grabbing as much attention as they should have. That’s when I decided to dedicate my life towards bettering menstrual hygiene. Over the years, I was surprised to know that menstruation is seen as the greatest taboo, not just in our country, but across the globe. Mothers don’t talk to daughters; daughters don’t talk to mothers, no one talks to the men about it and no one goes to the doctors. Today, we are talking about it, but it has taken us many years to get so far. I’ve pledged to spend my life to make India a sanitary napkin-friendly country because it’s every woman’s need. The fact that we’re discussing this is a sign of evolution. That a Bollywood film is being made on the subject is also a sign of evolution. I believe that Bollywood has a great reach and it will take the subject to the remotest corners of our country and speak to people in a manner they understand. There will be more debates and more open forum discussions. I hope the movie encourages people to discuss the subject.

Women are nurturers and menstruation is a sign that a woman’s body is gearing up to embrace motherhood. Why do you think that people attach taboo to menstruation to begin with?
I don’t know why, but people believe it’s all secretive and no one must discuss it. There are fears attached to menstruation which are often unfounded and lead to taboos. For instance, in our country, there are regions where it’s believed that if a newly wed woman uses a sanitary pad, and if by chance, someone steps on it, her mother-in-law will die. It’s believed in some pockets that if an unmarried girl uses a pad and a dog smells it, she will never get married. Such deeply entrenched beliefs stop the subject from becoming a public debate. In so many places, menstruating women are kept in a secluded room, as if they are quarantined. And they are usually a bunch of 10-12 women. There are cavelike enclosures in very poor conditions, which are unhygienic to say the least. Taboos that have passed down from generations have stopped these topics from coming out in the open. Even advertisements use a blue liquid to depict menstrual blood. Why should that be the case? Though there is one ad every five minutes, the number of women using pads is still quite low. The idea is to approach women, one-on-one, to break away from the taboos around using pads. Even today, a monthly grocery list will have everything, but not sanitary pads. People will pay thousands to doctors, but not a few hundreds to secure hygiene.

Was the situation similar when you started your journey?
I had seen my wife using a cloth as a pad during her cycle. When I asked her why she wasn’t using the products available in the market, she almost slapped me. She told me that she knew about the products, but that would mean cutting into our family’s other basic needs. And since no woman in the family was using pads, she also wasn’t using them. Once, I even gifted her a sanitary pad. Back then, when I went to the drug store and asked for the pad, the man selling it packed it in an old newspaper. He gave it to me like a banned product. I told him, ‘I am not asking for a condom’, but he did it the way he wanted to. Eventually, I decided to make pads at cheaper rates than those available in the market. It was a prolonged battle to get here, but I’m glad we’ve made the journey. I believe you can solve any problem, but it has to start at home.

Recently, there have been discussions of companies giving their female employees menstrual leaves. Do you think our work spaces are compliant for women and their hygiene needs?
Why do you think a lot of them take leave from work during menstruation? It’s because of the lack of clean toilets. Changing pads and disposing them is a problem in so many offices in the country. Also, women really have to strive to find a place to urinate. Men have enough avenues, but women have to hold on to their bladder till they find an appropriate place. And when they are menstruating, the need for hygiene is even bigger. Work places are male dominated and we have to alter them in a way that it becomes easier for women to work even during their periods. Even school girls take leave and find it difficult to talk about the problem. Women empowerment should include bringing the spotlight on this subject and it must begin at schools.

India’s sanitary-pad-man Arunachalam tells hitlist how he was chased, coerced into lending his story for Bollywood big screen adaptation
Mohar Basu (MID-DAY; January 4, 2017)

After hounding Menstrual Man Padma Shri Arunachalam Muruganantham for months and finally convincing him to allow them to translate it for the big screen, Twinkle Khanna, Akshay Kumar and R Balki are all set to showcase Pad Man to the world.

Back in 1998, Muruganantham had sparked off a revolution when he developed, after much derision and social censure, a low-cost sanitary napkin machine. The machine is installed in 23 states in India and he is now counted among India’s most inventive minds.

Going by Bollywood’s fluffy standards, wouldn’t a biopic on him be considered taboo? Well, not when the man behind the film is R Balki, who made a house-husband look hip in Ki & Ka last year. When hitlist connected with Muruganantham, he was on cloud nine. “I couldn’t be happier. Now, everyone will get to know about my hard work of two decades.”

Calling the movie a fictionalized biopic, he adds, “They have taken the core of my story and set it in fiction, taking many instances and references from my experiences. It is not a quintessential biography, like Gandhi.”

Twinkle, Akshay who?
Talking about how the film came about, he said, “This is not one of those movies that happened in a day or a week. It took us nearly one-and-a-half years to give it shape. A girl called Twinkle (Khanna) had been chasing me endlessly for rights. She tracked my every move. She desperately tried to reach me even when I was in Malaysia and the US. She finally caught me in London. My friends were curious about why Twinkle would want to meet me. It was only then that I learnt she is Rajesh Khanna’s daughter. I remember telling her, ‘Akshay Kumar has also been trying to get me for rights’. She laughed and said, ‘Yes, he is my husband’.”

Finally, Twinkle visited his house and workshop in Coimbatore. “She came with a man I’d never seen or heard of earlier. We had lunch and spoke at length about the story. The man wanted to smoke and I, as a rule, send all smokers downstairs. He was spotted by my neighbours, who told me the next day that he was renowned filmmaker R Balki. Everyone knew him as he’d directed Kareena Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan.”

Akshay came much later to his place. “He is extremely humble. The day I met him, I was going to a women’s college for a lecture. He was hell-bent on tagging along. Twinkle stopped him as the project was in the early stages then and they didn’t want the media to get a whiff of it.”

Muruganantham said he was happy that Twinkle was present at all meetings. “Menstruation is an issue that women understand best, so it was easy to talk to her without elaborating how I went about creating the first set of napkins. I couldn’t have done it with just two men.”

Hollywood aspirations
Muruganantham had, however, always dreamt of a Hollywood movie on his life. “I rarely watch Hindi films, but after meeting Akshay, I watched Airlift and Baby. I didn’t want to give the rights to anyone in India. I wanted this story to reach the world. But, I didn’t have the heart to turn down Akshay and Twinkle,” he said.

Will the film further the cause of women empowerment? “I am proud that for the first time in world cinema history, a mainstream male star will talk about menstruation and sanitary napkins in a full feature length Hindi movie. The story will be set in India’s heartland, but the theme is universal. In the '90s, it was taboo to talk about periods; women would not even talk to their husbands about it. Now, with this film, we are taking the debate to the public to talk about female personal hygiene,” he said.