I do not want to make light of Uganda’s crisis of torn condoms but I can’t help it. Rebecca Ratcliffe reports in The Guardian that “The charity Marie Stopes International is recalling more than a million condoms in Uganda, after officials raised concerns that they were prone to breaking.”
Reading the story, I am reminded of a revolting but brilliant insult that I used to hear in the early 1980s on Bombay’s streets. “Ey, fatey Nirodh ki aulad” or “Hey, son of a torn condom (Nirodh being the most widely used brand of condoms then)” is how the insult went. I say brilliant because it so succinctly captures the insult. To call someone a product of a torn condom is withering, notwithstanding the expression itself has high literary merit.
What makes Uganda’s problem of breaking condoms a crisis is this: “It is estimated that about 6% of Ugandans aged 15 to 49 are living with HIV, with women disproportionately affected by the virus, according to UNAids, the UN agency for tackling HIV. New HIV infections among young women aged 15 to 24 years were more than double those among young men.
Concerns were raised over two batches of the condoms, which each contained about 335,000 condom packs. Marie Stopes International said the manufacturer is approved by the UN Population Fund, the UN agency responsible for supporting family planning, and that products are tested at a World Health Organization lab before shipment.”
Defective condoms have a direct impact on public health and do indeed create a question of life and death. It is hard to say whether and to what extent the defective condom brand may already have caused some damage.
In the Indian context, Nirodh were first made by a state-owned enterprise called Hindustan Latex in 1969 and their quality, although generally good, could be problematic at times. Hence “Ey, fatey Nirodh ki aulad.”
I just found out something funny about how the word Nirodh came to be used for the condom brand. It seems it was originally called ‘Kamaraj’, derived from the Indian cupid Kamadev. It so happened that the president of the Congress Party in those days was K. Kamaraj and he would not have taken kindly to being called a condom. It is just as well because as names go Nirodh is much better than Kamaraj.