Two Good

Akshay Kumar and Twinkle Khanna are as different as chalk and cheese. But, as a couple, they are a perfect fit. As they promote Padman together, THE WEEK takes a look at what makes them click

- Priyanka Bhadani

It was, perhaps, seren-dipity that led Twinkle Khanna to Arunachalam Muruganantham’s story. She “stumbled upon” it while researching for an article on menstruation. Twinkle and ‘Muruga’—as she calls him, not only because her “tongue trips over his name”, but also because he is a friend now—however, are not people who leave things to fate. “Luck only comes when you have worked hard and created something where you can thrive,” said Twinkle, in an exclu sive interview to THE WEEK. That could be one reason why she chose to fictionalise Muruganantham’s tale of trials and triumph in her book The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, and later produce Padman.

For Muruganantham, on whom Padman’s protagonist—Lakshmikant Chauhan—is based, period was once a woman’s “dirty body function”. But, that changed after he got married. When he saw his wife, Shanti, carrying a “nasty cloth with blood stains”, he asked her why she wasn’t using a sanitary napkin. They couldn’t afford it, she said. So, he tried to impress her by buying a packet of pads, for which he had to cycle 14km from his home in Coimbatore. The shopkeeper, he said in a TED Talks video, rolled the packet in a newspaper and gave it to him as if it were a “banned item”. “I don’t know why, I had not asked for a condom,” he said, chuckling.