Mumbai, Feb 9 (IANS): The National Award winning film "Padman" on Sunday completed two years of its release, and its director R. Balki is super proud to be associated with such crucial project, which is based on Arunachalam Muruganantham, a small town entrepreneur from Tamil Nadu, who invented low-cost sanitary napkins to generate awareness in rural areas.

"'Padman' was possibly one of the most special films. It is the world's first mainstream feature film to tackle menstrual hygiene. The biggest service the film did was to make the word 'pad' a lot more easy for people to say. It's proven research that the film is one of the biggest contributors in creating menstrual hygiene awareness in India.

"Even the government has taken a lot of initiatives after the film's release. Sanitary napkins' manufacturers were provided with land and machines. I thank Mr. Muruganantham to bring such a big change in the country," Balki told IANS.

Released in February 2018, "PadMan" featured Akshay Kumar, Sonam Kapoor Ahuja and Radhika Apte in the lead roles. It was backed by Akshay's wife and author Twinkle Khanna.