Arunachalam Muruganantham is a fascinating man. Not just for embracing the worthy cause of producing affordable sanitary napkins for the poor and revolutionising the concept of menstrual hygiene in rural India but also as an individual, especially when it comes to his unique, often self deprecatory, sense of humour. His deep-rooted wit shines through in Amit Virmani’s documentary Menstrual Man as you see him making a light of the worst ordeals in his life. The idiosyncrasy and ingenuity could have led to a compelling biographical portrait on screen. Unfortunately R. Balki drowns out all the delightful drollness and quirks in overt piety and dreary melodrama. Akshay Kumar’s Lakshmikant then is not even half as intriguing as India’s real Pad Man .
- Director: R. Balki
- Cast: Akshay Kumar, Radhika Apte, Sonam Kapoor
- Run time: 139.59 minutes
- Storyline: Based on the life of Arunachalam Muruganantham, who, prompted by his wife’s period problems, initiated the production of affordable sanitary napkins for the poor
There is a certain dignity and forthrightness with which Muruganantham talks (in Menstrual Man ) about dropping out of school and getting to learn English his own way from the scratch. He candidly admits that his English is self-taught, “designed” by himself and you instinctively respect his native intelligence. On the other hand, in Pad Man , the long UN speech sequence, in deliberately, calculatingly broken, halting English (that seems modelled more on Amitabh Bachchan’s “ Aisi angrezi aave hai ke I can leave angrez behind ” monologue in Namak Halaal), makes an annoying caricature of Lakshmikant and, in turn, Muruganantham.
Balki doesn’t know how he wants to tackle the story—at times his treatment is like the public service advertising of I&B ministry’s DAVP (Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity), merely expanding on the real life incidents without any flair or imagination—the talk of dirty rags and even ash that women take recourse to during “those five days”, the risk of infection, the talk of expensive sanitary napkins and how buying it would mean cutting down the family’s milk budget, the feedback forms given to medical college students or finding out about cellulose fibre.
Even Muruganantham’s weird research methodology is replicated as it is—the artificial uterus, football for a bladder, animal blood and even wearing the pad himself. Yet, at other moments Balki moves into the utterly filmi terrain—characters and emotions pitched on the extremes, a love triangle needlessly thrust in and some heightened moments like Lakshmi, with his “stained” pants jumping in slo-mo into the Narmada or hanging on to the balcony of a young girl, who has just started menstruating, to give her a pad.
On the bright side, Maheshwar and Narmada are a new welcome break from Varanasi-Ganga setting of Hindi films. There is a touch of whimsy in some dialogue and phrases—a person being referred to as Narmada ka kachchua (Turtle of Narmada) or a Casanova called “ dheele naade ka aadmi ” (this is entirely lost in translation) or a shopkeeper asking Lakshmi—“ Kishton mein gadda bana rahe ho kya (Are you making the mattress in instalments)—when he keeps asking him for some cotton every day.
On the other hand some lines left me cringing. Call me a feminazi but could we please dispense with making a “male” virtue out of coming to a “woman’s” aid: “ Ek aurat ki hifaazat mein naakaamyab insaan apne ko mard kaise kah sakta hai? (A person who is unable to protect a woman can’t call himself a man)" goes a line here. Funnily another “period” film that came last year— Phullu —had a similar dripping with male nobility dialogue: “ Jo auraton ka dard nahin samjhta, Bhagwan use mard nahin samjhta (One who disregards the pain of a woman isn’t considered a man by God).”
Did Muruganantham also get so upright, and uptight, about fighting for a woman’s cause? I doubt it. There’s impeccable idealism in his social entrepreneurship and community development model but without any moral burden that weighs down his onscreen avatar(s) and the film(s) at large.
Akshay Kumar’s performance comes with the trappings and obvious awareness of being a “crusader”; I’d much rather take him in an easygoing outing like Jolly LLB2 . Radhika Apte has little else to do other than weep copiously. Sonam Kapoor gets the worst intro scene in the history of Indian cinema—playing the tabla in a concert, off beam at that. She has a go at the instrument in one more scene (out of tune again) and then the professional table player element of her personality gets conveniently forgotten. Why make her a tabalchi in the first place?
Ignorance is bliss. Perhaps, it would be better to see the film in a vacuum. For all those unaware of Muruganantham, especially those in North India, and all those who haven’t seen Phullu last year, Balki’s film could well be an eye-opener. But, for those in the know, Pad Man is an example of how good causes may not always make great cinema.
