Meet the man who inspired Akshay Kumar's Padman, the one who made sanitary napkins

Akshay Kumar's Padman is inspired from the life of Arunachalam Muruganantham who made it his life motive to ensure that women in rural India practiced hygienic habits during menstruation

On the first day of the year, Akshay Kumar revealed his calendar for 2017. Out of the four movies- Jolly LLB 2, 2.o, Toilet: Ek Prem Katha and Padman that he announced, the last one has got many intrigued. Titled Padman and having an image of a sanitary napkin in the background, the movie is the maiden production of former actress turned author and Akshay’s wife Twinkle Khanna.

Known for taking up unconventional topics, Akshay has done the same with this too. The words written on the poster saying that it is inspired from a true story has left only one question ringing on everyone’s minds: Who is this Padman?

Well, his real name is Arunachalam Muruganantham and he ensured women got access to cheap sanitary napkins in his village. Arunachalam, a college drop-out from Coimbatore made this his life motive and came to be known as ‘India’s menstrual man’. This idea struck Arunachalam because he was upset with the unhygienic ways women suffered with every month.

He then started experimenting to make such napkins and involved females from his household for this. After a while, women close to Arunachalam got fed up of this obsession of him. But this didn’t stop him as Arunachalam then started using bladder with animal blood for his experiments.

Also read: Jolly LLB 2 trailer: Is there anything that Akshay Kumar can’t do flawlessly?

Arunachalam’s diligence bore fruits and he was able to make machines that manufactured pads at less than a third of the cost of commercial pads. His machines have been installed in 23 Indian states. After this revolutionary breakthrough, TIME magazine placed Arunachalam in its list of 100 most Influential people in the World in 2014.  This story of Arunachalam also made its way to Twinkle Khanna’s second book The Legend Of Laxmi Prasad.

But now the movie will get a silver screen treatment soon. It will be helmed by R Balki.

Also read: Twinkle Khanna is a flawed feminist, but an honest intellectual that Bollywood needs

Speaking about this maiden production of Twinkle, Akshay had said his wife aced everything she did and is proud of this one too. Since the announcement wishes for Twinkle flew from many renowned personalities of Bollywood.

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