Drama/Biography

Padman

CAST: Akshay Kumar, Radhika Apte and Sonam Kapoor

DIRECTION: R Balki

 

If you are a regular movie-goer you may have seen at least some biopics about rebel innovators who question status quo. The latest Akshay Kumar starrer ‘Padman’ is one such film inspired by a real-life innovator. The person in question, however, hasn’t contributed to rock­et science or made another Face­book. He’s a social entrepreneur named Arunachalam Muruganan­tham from rural South India, who achieves fame for his invention of a machine that produces low-cost sanitary pads.

 

 Padman, the movie, is based not in South India but in a village somewhere in Madhya Pradesh and Muruganantham’s fictional counter­part is named Lakshmikant Chau­han. Understandably, this is done to make the film more accessible to the mainstream audience and make the character more suitable for Akshay Kumar. In spite of these factual liber­ties that the movie takes, the actor’s portrayal of a village simpleton who questions the stigma surrounding menstruation and female hygiene successfully captures the story (and spirit) of the original Padman.

 

Director R Balki and his co-writer Swananda Kirkire have adapted pro­ducer Twinkle Khanna’s short story ‘The Sanitary Man from a Sacred Land’. When we first meet Laksh­mikant, he is a family man living with his young wife (Radhika Apte), accompanied by his mother and two younger sisters. He, a metal-worker, is the sole bread-winner in the fami­ly. We come to know that he has only studied till the eighth grade but that in no way caps his boundless curios­ity. In an early scene, he takes apart a wind-up toy and fashions it into an onion-chopper, just for his wife.

 

His normal life is disturbed when he finds out that his wife has been using dirty rags during her peri­ods. To him that rag is unfit even to clean his bicycle. So he brings her an expensive packet of sanitary pads from a medical shop. His wife refus­es to accept them because it would burn a hole in her husband’s wallet. Lakshmikant soon understands that buying sanitary pads isn’t an afford­able option for his household. But what if he makes them on his own?

 

 Soon he discovers that making inexpensive sanitary pads isn’t like taking apart a wind-up toy or mak­ing an onion-chopper. And the big­ger challenge is to make pads while facing the withering criticism of his own family and villagers. They act offended when Lakshmikant tries to hand out his homemade sani­tary pads to girls. They fume at him for poking at something which is strictly a ‘ladies problem’. Thus his obsession to create low-cost sanitary pads comes at a huge cost: his family disowns him and his wife’s family puts pressure on her to divorce him. Roadblocks keep coming in Laksh­mikant’s way but he is not going to rest until he has actually found his solution.

 

 As mentioned earlier, the story closely follows Muruganantham’s struggles and unfolds in a linear and straightforward manner, stay­ing true to the real story. But since the makers had lots of material to cover, the screenplay at times feels rushed and many events in the story give you the impression that his suc­cess resulted from a series of lucky breaks and not from his persistent hard work.

 

In many places, the film’s script is downright lazy, as it uses inner monologues to make us under­stand how a character is feeling at the moment. It is the support­ing cast that breathes life into the average dialogues and makes the clunky scenes work. Radhika Apte is convincing as Lakshmikant’s wife. Meanwhile, Sonam Kapoor is likable in a small yet crucial role.

 

Padman has its downsides but it is made with sincerity and gus­to. The movie should be cherished not because it’s an Akshay Kumar star-vehicle but because it dares to celebrate and signify the work of a real-life hero.

3 Stars