KNOW ABOUT THE REAL ‘PADMAN’ OF INDIA

You must have seen the trailer of Akshay kumar starrer ‘PADMAN’  by now and if you haven’t, the first thing is to watch it.

Now that you have seen it let’s talk about it, shall we?  It must have felt good to finally come across a movie that is going to talk about the issue which is still considered a taboo in our country. Yes, the issue of menstrual hygiene! It is such an important part of half the population of our country yet the subject has never been touched. Why is that? Probably because we as a society haven’t really upgraded. The  movie has Radhika Apte and Sonam Kapoor in lead roles along with Akshay Kumar.

But what we need to talk about first before talking about the movie, is the inspiration behind it. The real Padman of india, Arunachalam Muruganantham- an ordinary man with extraordinary perseverance.  He is from Coimbatore,Tamil Nadu, born in 1962. When he was young his father died in a car accident and he lived his entire life in poverty. His mother was a farm labourer and she worked to help him financially for his education. Due to financial crisis he dropped out of school at age 14 and started to work as a welder to support his family. He got married in 1998 to shanti and that is when he discovered the practices behind menstruation and how it was considered a taboo. It irked him that his wife was using dirty rags and newspapers during her menstrual cycle because sanitary napkins were expensive. 

He was looking for volunteers but women were shy to talk about it. He had to face a lot of obstacles while trying to help. Embarrassed by his acts his wife left him and he was also ridiculed by the villagers. But Arunachalam did not give up and by working hard, finally invented a low budget machine that would make sanitary napkins of very less cost compared to those produced by big companies. In 2006 he visited IIT Madras to showcase his idea and he won Grassroots  Technological Innovations Award  and even received funding. Now he has become a social entrepreneur and his invention has won him many awards and accolades. He was listed in Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world 2014. He says he wants to create livelihoods for poor women and also make India as 100% sanitary napkin using country from level of only 2% in rural areas.

He is indeed a real superhero, for it takes guts to do something like this and put your efforts for the betterment of others. And we hope that this movie would bring more people to light and create awareness about the issue. Such movies should be highly appreciated that try to give a message and help us better ourselves. So let us all strive hard to become better as a society together!

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