We see and hear a lot of funky things in cabs, from extremely horny couples turning my UberPOOL/OlaShare into a hotel room to aunties screaming at their tailor/kaam vaali bai/ husband/random person who just had the wrong number to intense (albeit misguided) political discussions.
But this, by far, was the weirdest.
Imagine the look on my face when a cabbie tells me that a taboo-ridden country like India has the explicit use of a contraceptive institutionalised.
Whatte wow!
This saga began when I stepped into a sharing cab on an approximately hour-long journey back home. The cabbie was very affable and friendly and we struck up a conversation regarding the Ola-Uber strike that was in news that day.
After bi***ing about the corporate hegemons that had ruined his life, he started telling me about how cab driving was before Ola-Uber and how he has traveled to a lot of places like Himachal Pradesh and other states with tourist destinations driving around government officials.
And then casually, out of nowhere he goes like
“Bhaiya, Himachal se yaad aaya, aapko bata du mai, vaha na agar gaadi mei 3 condom na ho, toh challan lag jata hai”.
After laughing at his face for 30 whole seconds, I told him to not joke around. He replied with a serious face “Bhaiya, sacch bol raha hu, First Aid Kit aur 3 condom zaroori hote hai”.
I could not believe this. Never would I have thought that India would have rules mandating something as tabooed as condoms. As the conversation went on, he actually gave me a very lucid reason as to why this rule existed.
Read More: This Ten-Year-Old Condom Ad Is What We Need To Break The Sanskaari Stereotypes
The TL: DR version is this: Cab (and truck drivers according to him) travel long distances and have a back-breaking schedule to follow. Whereas cab drivers spend a lot of time doing nothing as their clients roam around clicking selfies and buying overpriced “souvenirs”, truck drivers are alone and have little to no company.
Both of them are away from their families for extended periods of time and are in need of company. As a result, they engage in sexual encounters, mostly with prostitutes (and sometimes, according to my cabbie, with the local village girls, consensually of course).
If this sex is unprotected, which it is most of the time, it can and has led to a high number of unplanned pregnancies (causing a plethora of problems for the woman) and a rise in sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Condoms, of course, prevent both these problems, and this rule was put in place to ensure that a condom was never too far away.
At this point, I cracked a joke that if I ever needed a condom in Himachal, I would just ask my cabbie. To which my current cabbie replied with a loud guffaw and then smiled a sly smile, no doubt reminiscing about his misadventures in the rolling hills and exotic atmosphere of Himachal Pradesh.
Now, I tried my best to research online to find a specific rule for cabbies and truck drivers to carry condoms. All I could find is this tweet by Akash Chopra:
Apparently its compulsory for all commercial vehicles to carry a fire extinguisher, first-aid kit, PUC cert etc. & a condom to avoid a fine!
— Aakash Chopra (@cricketaakash) December 5, 2012
Now, while there is little to no information regarding a specific rule for condoms, the problem of STDs in long-haul truck drivers in India is a well-documented one. According to this research cited in the British Medical Journal,
87% of subjects (4949 men) were sexually promiscuous, of whom only 11% (563) used condoms during commercial sex. The percentage using condoms decreased with increasing age. In the 21-30 age group (n=1766), 78% of unmarried sexually promiscuous men (331/425) reported having 31-60 sexual partners during the past 12 months
There are numerous documentations about this risk of STD and how truck drivers have spread it into rural areas. All of them point towards the fact that since these drivers are mostly isolated for a long period of time and have access to cheap, commercial sex, they indulge in it heavily. And since, contraceptives is as alien a concept in India as free speech, they tend to contract these diseases and spread them further.
All in all, this fact that I could not unequivocally verify, is a pretty good thing for both the sexual health of these drivers and for the removal of taboos regarding sex, contraceptives etc.
I hope I can find more evidence of this rule actually existing and being enforced and when I do, you can read all about it, exclusively on ED :p
Sources: LWW Journals, British Medical Journal, The Metro Gnome
Image Credits: Google Images
You would also like to read:
http://edtimes.in/2018/04/the-evolution-of-condoms-from-sheaths-made-of-animal-parts-to-rubber-and-latex/
