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SONG CHALLENGE WINNER!
The Song Challenge:
The Day That Saji's Sari Slipped and Baji's Bobbin Got Buffed . . . India's health minister has banned the use of
condoms to lubricate bobbins used in weaving saris. CP Thakur has told parliament sari makers are using
condoms to speed up weaving because condom lubricant was also good at stopping yarn from snapping.
Mr. Thakur claims the use of so many condoms in the sari industry is affecting India's population control programme.
"Instructions have been issued to stop this practice," Mr Thakur said. Mr Thakur says the
use of condoms in weaving is causing shortages and instances of unscrupulous government health workers meant to
distribute free condoms to contain population instead selling the condoms to sari makers. Workers rub
the condoms on bobbins while they make their brocade saris. The industry is using an estimated half a
million condoms every day. Each of the 125,000 looms in the city of Varanasi uses an average four
condoms per day. It takes nearly 15 condoms to produce one Benarasi sari. The lubricant on the
condom smoothens the bobbin and makes it move faster between threads..
Love Means Never Having to Sew Your Sari by Lonesome EJ
It was a typical Monday and she was sitting at her loom
When the man from National Health walked into the room
As the constant hum and racket slowly dropped away
The man in the Nehru jacket climbed on a chair to say
"Love means never having to sew your sari
To dig this you don't need a quarry
These rubbers are not for your bobbin
They belong instead on your husband's knobbin!
Do you see the tangled web you're weaving?
We must restrain this wild conceiving
Or the sari that you make today
Will make you sorrier by next May!
And every baby that you deliver
Is another droplet added to the river
That flows into a great Population Lake
And still more saris you must then make!
And the more rubbers that go for sewing
The less their are for to-and-froing
And what should have gone to your husband's lever
Now undermines our whole endeavor!"
The Man was now quite fraught with care
And fell down trembling from his chair.
He was carried out by two strong men
As the hum and rattle began again
And as she rubbed a rubber on her thread
She thought of what the man had said
She would tuck away a condom for her husband Ari
If love means never having to sew your sari