Pad Man: The first Bollywood film to tackle menstruation

The groundbreaking film intends to smash taboos around menstruation, a subject that is rarely talked about on the Indian sub-continent, and explore the difficulties around period poverty

The blockbuster 'Pad Man' stars Akshay Kumar as the inventor of lost-cost sanitary pads in India

Bollywood has always been considered less progressive that Western cinema in terms of tackling social issues. While commercial Hindi cinema bought all the glitz and exotic glamour and inspired a multitude of Goodness Gracious Me sketches, the serious stuff was usually left to arthouse cinema.

In recent years, the boundary between Bollywood films and Indian arthouse cinema has become increasingly blurred, with a growing number of mainstream directors using the commercial genre to explore controversial issues and challenge taboos that exist in society.

However, a new Bollywood film is breaking taboos on-screen in order to break taboos off-screen.

Dubbed the world’s first feature film on menstruation, Pad Man, released on 9 February, is based on the true life story of Arunachalam Muruganantham, a welder from a small, conservative village in Tamil Nadu who sets about inventing low-cost sanitary pads after discovering his wife was using old rags because they couldn’t afford the expensive imports in the shops.

Akshay Kumar as ​sanitary-pad hero Lakshmikant Chauhan and Sonam Kapoor as his wife Rhea in ‘Pad Man’

The film is a groundbreaking venture bearing in mind the taboo around menstruation in the Indian sub-continent, a subject that is rarely talked about above hushed whispers behind closed doors, and it is a timely exploration of the difficulties women face given the current global concern around period poverty.

The media frenzy around the film begs the question: why is a natural bodily function such a taboo in mainstream cinema? Even here is the West, when it comes to menstruation, we are still a bit squeamish. We are OK with zombie serial killers and sadomasochism​ in Fifty Shades of Grey, but any discussion on periods makes us go 50 shades of red.

Sanitary hygiene adverts will consist of glamorous models, dancing, rock climbing and looking like they are doing anything apart from suffering from PMT, when the truth of the matter is that most of us feel tired, spotty and would make Norman Bates seem like an easy going kind of guy.

The story of how a lower-caste man who dropped out of school at the age of 14 and revolutionised menstrual hygiene in India – and was named one of Time magazine’s 100 world’s most influential people – may seem an unlikely subject for a Bollywood film. But the story itself has all the characteristics of the genre; it is, at heart, an Indian love story about a man who defies the expectations of society and goes against the odds for the woman he loves, according to actor Sonam Kapoor, who plays the main character Lakshmi’s long-suffering wife in the film.

Kumar is the Bollywood equivalent of Chris Hemsworth and a sixth dan black belt

“It’s a very compelling story about a very ordinary man who did something extraordinary but not for himself, but for women and for the woman he loved,” she says. “That this was something that happened in India and was very much an Indian story was fascinating for me as an Indian girl. Also it’s so relevant to what is going on around the world at the moment, yet it has barely been spoken about internationally, let alone in India. I know girls from very progressive backgrounds like mine but still have a sense of shame and secrecy about it.”

While she acknowledges she comes from a place of privilege, in spite of that or perhaps because of it she is incredibly down to earth and comes across more like an enthusiastic student than with the airs and graces one would expect from one of Bollywood’s most bankable stars.

Her father is Slumdog Millionaire star Anil Kapoor. “I’m very lucky to have had him as a father and to have had the progressive upbringing that he has given me,” she says. “He’s so respectful to women and you lead by example. He doesn’t come from a progressive background. He is from a very male-dominated family and his sister was married off at a young age, so to come from a background like that and be the progressive and compassionate man he is comes from him being an artist. Not all women are as a lucky as me in that respect, and this film brings that close to home. I hope the film can give women a voice.”

Pad Man was written by the director R Balki and produced by former actor turned writer and social activist Twinkle Khanna, who hopes the commercial nature of the film will raise awareness about an issue that is still having serious implications on the health, education and social opportunities of women.

The statistics make harrowing reading. In India only 12 per cent of women have access to sanitary products, with the rest making do with using old newspapers, rags and even ash. Approximately a quarter of girls drop out of school because of menstruation and, according to the Indian ministry of health, 70 per cent of women face serious infections that can have devastating consequences on their reproductive health.

Kumar and Radhika Apte in the new film, which the producer hopes will raise awareness of an issue with serious health implications

“I came across this story while I was researching my newspaper column for The Times of India and I was immediately mesmerised by it,” says Khanna, “Here was a man who was a bigger feminist than many women I know. This man was a high school drop-out who barely spoke English and became an innovator and named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people.”

The film is all the more daring when you consider the taboos around menstruation and menstrual hygiene. During menstruation, women are not allowed to go to the temple, share food and cooking utensils and touch family members. In some regions it is believed that if women go out after sunset during menstruation they will go blind.

“I had seen the taboos for myself,” Khanna says. “When I was growing up, there were two girls at my boarding school who didn’t want to go home in the school holidays because when they had their period, they were segregated and their meals were put in steel plates and left outside their doors. As I began my research, lots of women had their own story to tell. One woman I met attended a religious ceremony and didn’t tell anyone she had her period then when her in-laws found out they threw her out. There was a case in August, where a 12-year-old girl threw herself off a balcony and died after she was pulled up by her teacher because she had got blood on her school bench.”

While the all-singing, all-dancing genre of commercial Bollywood may seem at odds with the subject matter, Khanna believes that the genre will have the power to reach the masses in a way that no social health campaign can. One of the key factors to the film’s success was the casting of actor Akshay Kumar, the Bollywood equivalent of Chris Hemsworth, who is a sixth dan black belt in karate and is also Khanna’s husband.

“It was actually Akshay’s idea to turn the story into a commercial film,” says Khanna. “When I told him I wanted to make a movie on this, I was thinking along the lines of a small, arthouse film. He was actually the one who suggested turning it into a commercial film. If you think about it, how many people watch documentaries? The whole purpose of this movie, which is to reach the masses, would be lost. Because he is someone who people idolise as an action hero with a very masculine image, so the incongruity of such an alpha male holding a sanitary pad would make the film accessible to men.

Despite her passion for the subject, Khanna was worried about whether Indian audiences would be ready for such a film. “We had one incident where we had two actors who had shot some scenes and the next day, we were due to film them holding sanitary pads, but they ran away and never came back because they were so mortified about what they had to do.

“When the movie was complete we had to think about how the public would receive it. I definitely had apprehensions, fearing that people would feel it’s like Voldemort, the thing that should not be named. Fortunately, the trailer has been well received and even before the movie’s release, one of the things I hoped for is already happening where a whole conversation has started among both men and women and across generations.

“Our message about this film is very clear: it is a family movie, a film you can take your kids to see. In fact, you should take your kids to see it because its something everybody should know about.”

‘Pad Man’ will be on general release in the UK on 9 February