Big-screen musical tells story of welder
Arunachalam Muruganantham, who became a pioneer for menstrual health
By Alia
Waheed
Menstruation isn’t the most obvious topic for
a blockbuster, but the story of how a lower-caste man from a village in India
dropped out of school at 14 and became the unlikely champion of menstrual
health in the subcontinent has become the subject of a Bollywood film released
this week.
Pad Man, produced by actress-turned-writer
Twinkle Khanna, based on a short story from her book The Legend of Lakshmi
Prasad, is inspired by the life of Arunachalam Muruganantham, a social activist
from Tamil Nadu. A welder by trade, he set about creating affordable sanitary
towels after discovering that his wife, Shanthi, had been using dirty rags
during her periods.
“I wouldn’t use that cloth to clean my
vehicle,” said Muruganantham, 55, who was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most
influential people in 2014. “When I asked her why, she said we would have to
cut half of our milk budget to buy sanitary pads.
“I went to the pharmacy to buy her the pads
as a gift. The shop assistant wrapped it in newspaper like it was a smuggled
item. It was only 10 grams of cotton, but cost 40 times its worth. I thought of
how most women in rural areas couldn’t afford them. I wanted to change my wife
from unhygienic to hygienic practices during menstruation. Everything started
from my wife and now it’s gone global.”
While the all-singing, all-dancing genre may
seem at odds with the complexity of the issue, both Khanna and Muruganantham
hope the film will break down taboos that have a devastating effect on the
health, education and social opportunities of women, particularly in rural
areas.
In India, only 12% of women have access to
sanitary products; the rest struggle to improvise, using old newspapers, rags
and sawdust. The Indian ministry of health estimates that 70% of women are at
risk of severe infection because of this. One in 53 women in India will be
diagnosed with cervical cancer in her lifetime, compared with one in 135 in the
UK.
Nearly a quarter of Indian girls stay away
from school during their period, and the difficulties they face were brought to
light in August last year, when a 12-year-old in Tamil Nadu killed herself
after being humiliated by a teacher in front of her class when she accidentally
bled through her uniform. At the time, the only menstrual hygiene products
available were expensive imports, often only sold in urban areas.
But Muruganantham’s quest to create a
sanitary towel that would be cheap and easy to manufacture domestically, using
locally sourced materials, was far from straightforward. For a man to drag the
issue into the open was particularly controversial, especially in
Muruganantham’s conservative village. In one humiliating episode, without any
volunteers willing to try his prototype pad, he fashioned himself an artificial
uterus made of an old ball filled with goat’s blood. When the ball split he
ended up covered in blood in front of the villagers.
“I walked, cycled and ran with it under my
clothes, constantly pumping blood out to test my sanitary pad’s absorption
rates. Everyone thought I had gone mad. I used to wash my bloodied clothes at a
public well and the village concluded I had a sexual disease.”
His quest took an emotional toll: he was
ostracised by his village and his wife left him for several years, unable to
cope with the humiliation. “My wife didn’t understand me. She left me. My
mother left me. This topic is such a taboo, even my mother won’t discuss it with
her daughter and here I was, a man, trying to do something. The community
thought I was a pervert. They wanted an exorcism because they thought I was
possessed by demons.”
The lack of access to hygiene products was
only half the battle. Tackling the misconceptions around menstruation was
perhaps more challenging. “There are regions where it’s believed that if an
unmarried girl uses a pad and a dog smells it, she will never get married. We
worked at a village where they believed if women went out after sunset during
menstruation, they will go blind.”
His breakthrough came in 2009, when he won an
award from India’s National Innovation Foundation – which supports grassroots
technological initiatives – to make and distribute machines for the manufacture
of sanitary towels in rural communities. The machines are operated by local
women in each area, which provides much-needed employment while also spreading
awareness about menstrual hygiene. More than 600 machines have already been
distributed in 23 states.
Muruganantham hopes the film will help him
fulfil his dream of making India a 100% sanitary pad-using country. “The film
will create more awareness. We still have a huge task ahead but things are
changing. I’m ecstatic to be known as pad man, as it makes a difference to
women’s lives.”
