The world's first feature film on periods is set to be released in the UK. Can a comedy help break the taboo of female menstruation?
It's a scene that captures the 20-year struggle by a poor school drop-out from southern India to buy sanitary pads for his wife - and ended up changing the lives of millions of women around the world.
Arunachalam Muruganantham - played by Bollywood star Akshay Kumar - cycles through his local village waving cheerfully.
Unbeknown to his neighbours, he is testing the effectiveness of his new invention by wearing pink pants and a home-made sanitary pad which is slowly filling with goat's blood from a football bladder tied around his waist.
But behind the laughter of the comedy- Pad Man - is the true story of how Muruganantham invented a low-cost machine that revolutionised women's healthcare.
It started in 1998 when newly married Muruganantham noticed his wife Shanti hiding something.
"It was a nasty rag cloth - she was going to use it during her menstruation. I wouldn't even use it to clean my vehicle," he tells the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme.
"So I decided to gift her a sanitary pad. The shopkeeper gave it to me as a smuggled product. Out of curiosity I opened the packet. The cotton product was sold for four rupees (4p) - 40 times what it cost to make."
source: www.bbc.com
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