A Bollywood movie about an inventor who created a revolutionary machine that makes cheap sanitary pads hits screens this week, challenging taboos surrounding menstruation in socially conservative India.
Arunachalam Muruganantham is nicknamed India’s “menstrual man” for transforming the lives of poor women forced to use items like old rags, sand and leaves during their periods.
He has been lauded by India’s government and is now getting the star treatment with Bollywood A-lister Akshay Kumar portraying him in Pad Man, releasing on Friday.
Photo: AFP
It is the latest socially conscious movie to come out of a film industry known more for producing complex love stories featuring handsome heroes and elaborate dance routines.
Muruganantham hopes the movie will help raise awareness about the importance of menstrual hygiene in patriarchal India where women, particularly in rural areas, are frequently shunned during their monthly cycles.
“Menstruation is still a taboo subject in India and a tough subject for a film,” he told AFP by phone from his home state of Tamil Nadu in southern India.
“But I read the script and I was also on the sets to guide them. I think [R] Balki [the writer and director] has handled the subject beautifully. People will talk about personal hygiene and it will give hope to the younger generation to do innovative things,” he added.
Muruganantham’s remarkable story began in the late 1990s when he was shocked to discover that his wife was using newspaper and dirty cloths during menstruation because sanitary pads were too expensive. He decided to do something about it and started experimenting with different designs using cotton. His first few prototypes were not very successful and quickly his wife and sisters refused to be guinea pigs any longer. When other women in the village balked at his requests to try his products he started testing them on himself, using a football bladder and animal blood.
Muruganantham was mocked and ostracized by fellow villagers, and his wife even left him for a while, but he remained undeterred and intensified his search. After two years he discovered that sanitary pads are made from cellulose found on trees.
RISKY
Muruganantham also learned that the machine which ground down the pulp before turning it into napkins cost hundreds of thousands of dollars so he decided to create his own.
In four years he had invented an easy-to-use device which could produce pads at a third of the cost of the commercially produced ones. The machines themselves were also vastly cheaper at around 75,000 rupees (US$1,170).
“I wanted to make sure that technically we did not go wrong, so he agreed to supervise,” Balki, the director, said of Muruganantham’s role on set.
Actresses Radhika Apte and Sonam Kapoor star alongside Kumar whose character, based on Muruganantham, is called Lakshmi.
The 50-year-old actor, whose films regularly rake in more than one billion rupees (US$15.6 million) at the box office, is no stranger to starring in movies with an important message.
Last year’s comedy, Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (Toilet: A love story), focused on the lack of toilets in India and the problem of open defecation. It was a massive hit, grossing upwards of US$2 billion rupees, but Balki says a film about periods is an altogether different proposition.
“Pad Man is possibly the riskiest film Akshay has done because of the taboo, unexplored subject,” he told AFP.
Several million more Indian women are now estimated to use sanitary pads thanks to Muruganantham. His company, Jayaashree Industries, has more than 2,000 units across the majority of India’s states and also exports to dozens of countries. The machines also provide employment to thousands of rural women.
In 2014 he was included in Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people in the world. Two years later India’s government awarded Muruganantham one of the country’s highest civilian honors.
The release of Pad Man is set to elevate his fame further but he insists he won’t be letting it go to his head.
“The cause is becoming big, but I am remaining the same,” he said.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist