Padman title track: Akshay Kumar is the superhero in pink underwear. Watch video

Padman title song explains that there is a thin line dividing a mad man and a superhero -- it is the thought that really counts. Akshay Kumar is the small-town hero who is a marketing genius and a visionary all rolled into one.

What do you need to excel in today’s India -- fluent English? a marketing degree? IIT education? All three are wrong because what you really need is a dream and a belief that cannot be shaken. Padman, Akshay Kumar’s upcoming film, is about such a man. He is a superman and a mad man, as Padman’s title track tells us, and frankly there is only a thin line dividing the two. Unlike the superheroes of the west, this one doesn’t wear his underwear on his spandex suit, instead he wears a pink underwear with a sanitary pad underneath his sparkling white shirt and pant.

Akshay Kumar in a still from Padman title song.

For those who came in late, Padman is based on the life of India’s Menstrual Man -- Arunachalam Murugananthamn -- who wanted to “please his wife” by replacing her rag cloth with a sanitary pad and was told that it would disturb their family budget. The film captures Muruganantham’s efforts to make a cheap sanitary pad, his experiments with wearing one and using animal blood to test if it leaked and the hostile reaction of his community for talking openly about menstruation.

A school drop-out, Muruganantham now runs a company in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, supplying women with sanitary pads in 4,500 villages and providing technology for his low cost hygiene products to 19 other countries.

Akshay shared the second song of Padman on Monday afternoon, which sounds like an anthem for Made In India, desi superheroes and more. Sharing the song, Akshay wrote, “Superhero hai yeh Pagla! Meet the Madman with #ThePadManSong: http://bit.ly/ThePadManSong .@PadManTheFilm @sonamakapoor @radhika_apte @mrsfunnybones @SonyPicsIndia @kriarj #RBalki.”

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Superhero hai yeh Pagla! Meet the Madman with #ThePadManSong: https://t.co/HrwQqmulan@PadManTheFilm @sonamakapoor @radhika_apte @mrsfunnybones @SonyPicsIndia @kriarj #RBalki

— Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar)

Written by Kausar Munir and composed by Amit Trivedi, the song talks about our desi Superman who does not need to jump from multi-storeyed buildings to prove his machismo. While the song celebrates the real life hero as compared to the silver screen ones, it also reinforces archetypical concepts. Akshay says, “Ek aurat ki hifazat karne mein nakaamyab insaan apne aap ko mard kaise keh sakta hai? (How can someone, who failed to protect a woman, call himself a man?)”

Mika Singh has sung the number.

Watch the Padman song here:

Directed by R Balki, the film also features Sonam Kapoor in a lead role. It is slated to hit theatres on January 26, 2018.

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