Subhash K Jha revisits R Balki’s Pad Man, which featured Akshay Kumar and Sonam Kapoor. The film, which was released in 2018, was revolutionary in many ways, shining the light on social injustice.
One man in Tamil Nadu, who is miraculously a convincingly-transformed North Indian in Balki’s endearing Pad Man, decided to do something about making sanitary pads affordable to poor women. The thought was not just unmentionable but also outrageous. It still is. The pain, humiliation, strife, and final victory of Laxmikant Chauhan is narrated in a series of quickly-cut quirky, bitterly humorous episodes (editor Chandan Arora can take a bow) that could easily have become caricatured, preachy, and propagandist.
Pad Man is none of the above. It celebrates the spirit of enterprise with enrapturing integrity and tempered gusto, rendering the saga of Laxmikant Chauhan’s journey from familial humiliation and spouse-dissertation to a Padma Shri addressing the United Nations. One of India’s finest cinematographers, P C Sreeram, makes Laxmikant’s audacious odyssey a visual manifestation of a life that defies logical definition.
Pad Man has two heroes. Akshay Kumar and PC Sreeram.
But before we get there, a word on the cinema of noble intentions that seems to have run out of steam in these times of perverse dreams. Nobility in these cynical twisted times when little girls get raped, and big boys sell state secrets for big bucks is not a quality we value in art. Given the premium we place on self-interest, the sheer generosity of spirit that R Balki displays in his fifth feature film—and by far his finest work—should be a reason to stand up and applaud Pad Man.
There is much more to celebrate in this wonderfully motivated film, a tidal wave of menstrual liberation that sweeps us into its charming folds like an old grandmother in whose arms we would cuddle and forget the worries of the world. Pad Man possesses a rare innocence and charm. The proclivity to live a life of utter selflessness that seeps out of every pore in its protagonist’s heart comes pouring out of every frame, wrapping us in a feeling of bonhomie that captures life’s most cherishable emotions.
It is very hard, almost impossible, to forget the protagonist, a true hero of our times, Laxmikant Chauhan. And not only because of the luminous way the character is written by Balki and his co-writer Swanand Kirkire. It’s the way Akshay Kumar plays Laxmikant, a man driven to insane bouts of audacity by the passion to diminish the pain that women experience for five days (disparagingly referred to as ‘test match’ by the boys of the mohallah) every month.
Balki adopts a simple, straightforward linear narrative mode, leaving behind the swag and swagger of Cheeni Kam, Ki & Ka and the underrated Shamitabh to focus on the man and his mission with a single-mindedness of vision shared in equal measures by the protagonist and the filmmaker. There are passages of keen satire rubbing shoulders with fleeting images of deep contemplation in the supple, sturdy, and rugged storytelling, all merging in a marriage of Pure Cinema and Social Statement.
The narrative does tend to overstate its case. And there are sequences such as the one between Sonam and her screen father in a car at the end, which smack of over-explanation. But most of the time, Balki knows where to hold back and where to let go. The pauses in Laxmikant’s saga are rarely filled with irrelevance. Balki and his leading man won’t allow a life so rarefied to be inured in nonsense.
The performances are uniformly appealing. I love Balki’s unusual casting tricks in all his films. Here in Pad Man, watch out for exciting underexposed acting talent, for instance, veteran actress Jyoti Subhash as Akshay Kumar’s mother. And Sunil Sinha (remember him in Gulzar’s Maachis?) as Sonam Kapoor’s Sardarji father. Sinha has some of the best father-daughter scenes with Sonam and the film’s finest line: “To be a complete father, try playing the mother. To be a complete man, try feeling a woman’s pain.”
While Radhika Apte, as Akshay’s wife, is uncharacteristically over-the-top in conveying a woman’s menstrual anxieties (at times, she behaves as though the wife Gayatri has her time of the month for the entire month), Sonam’s Pari is a delight. The actress plays a tabla player, an incorrigible do-gooder, and Laxmikant’s biggest support, all without toppling over into excessive sweetness.
Playing Laxmikant with a mixture of inbuilt ingenuity and curiosity, Akshay Kumar makes the man believable and endearing.
Back in 2018, Arunachalam Muruganantham just couldn’t get over the experience. “It was like my whole life, all its struggles and strife, all the grief and joy, flashing in front of me. I couldn’t have hoped for a better film on my life and struggle than this.”
So, is he fully satisfied? How much of his real story does Pad Man capture? “I’d say the film captures 80 percent of my real story. It couldn’t be 100 percent my story. Then it would’ve been a documentary on me. Cinema must define and refine reality. I feel the film captures the essence and the true meaning of my struggle to give women dignity and validation not only during their time of the month but all through the year. Akshay Kumar has played my character with such warmth, humour and finesse. I cried watching him and the film.”
Is Arunachalam Muruganantham a movie buff? “Not at all. I don’t watch films. I don’t have time for it. The last film I saw was Sholay with my father in 1975. And now I’ve seen my own story in Pad Man. My father is not here anymore with me. But I am sure he’d been very proud to see his son’s life portrayed so beautifully on screen.”
Arunachalam Muruganantham’s wife, who inspired his struggle to manufacture economical sanitary pads, has yet to see the film.
“My wife and daughter will watch the film in a couple of days with me. I can’t wait to see my wife’s reaction. The entire story of my life and the recognition it has brought me is because of her,” says the real-life Pad Man, who feels there should be more films on unsung heroes.
“But then how many Balkis are there to tell such stories?” wonders Arunachalam Muruganantham.
