In Condom Country

Shall I wear a condom tonight? Just want to play it safe, you know. It looks good, feels snug and makes me shine. And it leaves no room for experimentation and dithering. Just go forth and conquer. So I shall drape myself in it -- my Banarasi saree. The weavers in Uttar Pradesh are using the lubricant from condoms to polish the zari on the sarees and to give a diaphanous look to the final six-yard sensation. Talk of stretching it.

No wonder that 75 per cent of the sexually-active Indians who should be using condoms for safe sex are instead putting it to other use. In rural areas, according to one report, “In some places, we found that the condom was being used to carry water when people go to answer nature’s call in the fields. This is a convenient use and throw-water carrier for them. For the children, of course, it is a balloon they love blowing up.”

In urban parts of the country they are mixed with concrete and tar to help make roads. For roof-making, condoms are spread out to provide a waterproof layer.

At the individual level I can understand it being misused, but how does it end up with civil contractors and weavers? Apparently NGOs, who are given free condoms in bulk to distribute to people in their anti-HIV and safe sex campaigns, have now begun this lucrative trade. Is this a new development, or has it been going on for long without anyone’s knowledge?

And this is the largely uneducated segment that is denied knowledge. What about the urban and urbane men? I am glad a film like ‘Phir Milenge’ has been made. It shows an educated career woman who has tested HIV positive, and how she is ostracised by the so-called liberal society of which she is a part. (She is the creative head of an ad agency.) She decides to fight the case in the courts. What is important, besides this brave move, is the role of the man she had a relationship with. If he knew that he had been sleeping around, why did he not take precautions? In a world where everyone is at risk, a man may not love only one woman, but surely he can be sensitive enough for those few moments of bliss he experiences? Due to the delicate nature of a woman’s psychology and hormonal mood swings, the onus of safe sex does lie with the men.

This is what I want to talk about: The male attitude towards the condom. Most men do not like it. And many do not have views on the subject. But marketing gurus have turned a simple little ‘glove’ into a major issue. What should be an ordinary purchase has become a complicated venture. It is now not about men, but MEN.

Ways and means are found so that the male ego is not hurt in any fashion when it goes forth to conquer the unconquerable – the denial of posterity. There are slot machines where you can pretend to buy a cigarette packet or a can of cola, and now even dhaabas in remote towns and villages, and pick up some rubber instead. In many malls overseas prophylactics are in fact placed in the women’s health section! Of course, we are told that all those varieties on display – flavoured, ribbed, lubricated – are meant to benefit womankind, who will cry out in ecstasy the moment they perchance chance upon the object of desire. (Has anyone considered that we could buy those things ourselves if they were such a turn-on?)

Look at it this way. People dress up to make an impact, and if you are terribly insecure, you add on dollops of make-up as well. Well, a man wearing a fancy condom for the evening is dressed for the occasion, he is expressing himself, putting forth a point of view. It may even act as a safety-valve concealing many a hard truth. It is a known fact that men don’t want too many details about their most precious organ.

David Friedman, a chap who seems to know about such things, analysed it thus: “The ignorance is part cultural and all foolishness. Not long after humans left caves to live in huts, women started passing key information about menstruation and reproduction from one generation to the next. Men, on the other hand, told their sons to go out and get laid.”

Not much has changed today. Women openly visit the gynaecologist, men fear that a visit to the doctor will reveal some flaw and in these times of Viagra “when a pill can do the heavy lifting for you”, they couldn’t care less.

Often the burden of birth control is on the women -- they have to visit camps, get painful instruments fixed, take pills and display their new-found sterility like a badge of duty. A man who has had a vasectomy will either try and make up for it by proving just how macho he is, or he will go underground with this fact, as though it has debilitated him in some way.

That is precisely the reason condoms were made sexy. Men have always been uneasy about the use of the rubber; it probably reminds them of the utter wastage of their potential. What would a man have to show if he has deposited precious fluid into a sheath that will be discarded? Will the woman think any less of him since he has contributed zilch? Will he feel cheated for not having left a mark?

For an individual, a condom can be an unnerving device. This is why I suspect the marketing people put their heads together and decided to make it into a symbol, a grand combination of power combined with supreme sacrifice. The fear vanished the moment the male species was made to realise that they were doing it for the better of humankind and giving women pleasure at the same time.

And now in a world of rampant AIDS, the male has one more ace up his sleeve – he is an honourable citizen, health conscious and enlightened. Suddenly, an ordinary latex thing has become a political, social, and even economic (you are contributing to a better lifestyle for the future generation) statement.

What are its sexual connotations, though? I think in the deep recesses of their minds, men still believe that there is a chance, a small possibility, that they could have created life instead. I know of men who revel in the fact that they went about their business without being ‘clothed’, even with a woman they had no emotional attachment with, in the belief that they have helped the poor soul realise her maternal yearnings. There is also a sneaky admiration for their own immense potency.

The glamourisation of the condom is a move in this direction - to give the man the reassurance that he is going on an adventure trip. Where does that leave the women? Do they feel a part of this great safari to find the animal in the man? Will society forgive the female if she tries to seek out the animal in herself?