Is Your Condom Too Big? Take Heart

If you are internet-savvy and religiously read 'fowards' sitting on your mailbox, you've probably heard the news. That:

A survey of more than 1,000 men in India has concluded that condoms made according to international sizes are too large for a majority of Indian men.

The study found that more than half of the men measured had penises that were shorter than international standards for condoms.

This is a BBC report, not a mischievous fabrication by Ganga Mail, so you better read it with a straight face. But you could find your face being lit up with envy if you read yet another, similar, BBC report filed in August this year:

A range of extra-large condoms has been launched in South Africa, to cater for "well-endowed" men.

"A large number of South African men are bigger and complain about condoms being uncomfortable and too small," said Durex manager Stuart Roberts.

As if being beaten by South Africa in cricket was not bad enough.

Back to the survey on India. The part I found most interesting:

Over 1,200 volunteers from the length and breadth of the country had their penises measured precisely, down to the last millimetre. The scientists even checked their sample was representative of India as a whole in terms of class, religion and urban and rural dwellers.

Which means someone began with the presumption -- in order to rule out any discrepancy -- that a rich man could be longer than a poor and vice versa; or a Sikh could be longer than a Parsi and vice versa; or a business baron in Bombay could be better endowed than a rickshaw puller in Jhumri Talaiyya and vice-versa. How I wish comparable statistics were available, but they had to represent India as a whole, and now the verdict is out: We're small.

Before men start feeling miserable and their women start plotting a vacation to South Africa, let's pause and think. Sex, after all, lies in the thinking and not in the actual act. A dildo should suffice for the actual act; why then need a man? That's because a dildo is either battery- or self-operated -- it does not have a brain. And it is the brain that tickles the sex buds. The brain knows when to start, when to go fast, when to slow down, when to stop, when to cuddle, when to talk -- the dildo doesn't even have a voice.

But the dildo has one advantage: it can be as long as you want it to be. At a sex shop in London's Soho area, I once saw a bunch of young girls choosing from among colourful dildos -- they could have been in a bookshop browsing through Jeffrey Archers and Sidney Sheldons. Finally they found the right one -- gleefully so -- and got it gift-wrapped: perhaps a birthday gift for a friend. I don't know whether their choice was based on length or girth -- or maybe both -- but I still remember the colour of the fake you-know-what: pink!

But any thinking woman, in my opinion, would prefer a fullsome evening over fullness. If their preference is otherwise, they can happily go to Soho or South Africa. Now did I hear someone say, "Dude, what if I want fullsome as well as fullness?" My answer: Define fullness. I mean it is unfair to measure Indian men's penises and condemn them to be smaller than the 'international' crowd without a corresponding survey on their female counterpart.

By the way, why this debate? Indian men and Indian women are having lots of sex and producing children, and when an Indian woman gets tired of her man, she runs off to another Indian man and not a South African. So relax.

The whole condom story, according to me, is an 'international conspiracy' to sell more condoms. I have, after all, never ever come across a man who has complained that his condom was too loose the night before. Have you?