What Twinkle Khanna feels about Pad Man breaking the period taboo
Twinkle Khanna had ruled out being part of Hindi films until she began talking to Arunachalam Muruganantham, inventor of a machine that makes low-cost sanitary napkins. While speaking to him for her second book, a collection of short stories, Khanna knew that his story needed to reach out to a wider audience. What better medium than a Bollywood film?
Even better, if you get a star, who also happens to be your husband, to portray him on screen. Khanna started her own production company, Mrs Funnybones. Pad Man, the first film under the banner, releases today. Given her way with words, did Khanna think of writing the script too?
“If I am going to start writing a script which I have never done before plus produce this film too, I would end up taking on too much and too many new things at one go,” says Khanna.
“Balki is a great writer and competent director. He’d see the story from a genderless perspective.” The two travelled to Maheshwar and along with Swanand Kirkire settled on an outline for the film. “I am the surrogate mother,” says Khanna. “But this is Balki’s baby.”
Prod her on if she sees herself writing a film someday, Khanna didn’t give a direct answer but instead spoke about how writing has been her passion since childhood. “When I used to play in the garden of my grandmother’s house, I would walk on this line of bricks and I would tell myself stories repeatedly. Then in school, I started writing poetry. I had finished half a novel by the time I was 18. My mother (Dimple Kapadia) still has it on a floppy disc. In fact couple of pages of Salaam Noni Appa (a short story on The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad) are straight from that novel. Then I started writing columns. There has been a play and now a movie from the stories. I feel what I am competent at is telling and pick ing stories. The medium is irrelevant to me.”
Khanna says that Pad Man aims to educate in an entertaining manner. Even as the film shines a light on the taboos around menstruation and emphasises on hygiene, she says the topic won’t make the audiences “discomforted in any way”. What’s next for Mrs Funnybones, the writer and producer? “I have never worked on anything with a target,” she says. “If somebody put my career in a graph, they will see ups and downs all over the page.” But she slips in that she is working on her third book, this one a novel — her first — which she hopes will be out later this year.
(Courtesy of Mail Today)