MADAME BOA BOA’S FART IN THE FACE OF POWER AND THE INTERPRETER’S DILEMMAS

One of the most illustrious farts of all time, smelly and capable of intervening into the processes of history, was recorded by none other than the male Malayalam writer, Vaikom  Muhammed Basheer, who was, as the lore goes,  a low level gossipper, and capable of having vivid insights into such aromatic performances of the opposite gender. As Madame Boa Boa(Also called Boa constrictor), the literary researcher who had gone into the “Specific aspects of gender transmigrations in Basheer’s ‘Bhrr’” as her treatise for her Doctorate in philosophy and was to later become something of an expert on the subject with her Post- doctoral work on “A generalized theory of fart in world literature: From Sade to Basheer” and the initiator of the science of Fartology, a newly found branch to Osphresiology, was to put it, it was perhaps the first occasion on which a fart could subvert the long held position of thematics like, Love, death and fear as central to literature and enter into discourse as a meaningful event, equally significant as any other.

 When we look at the more recent technological innovations on the internet, we could easily see this as a significant beginning, with the fart machine which could explore the thematic of regional variations in real and performative farts, though still only partly capable of transmitting the aroma differences over the internet. With that one could easily have formed a better base for the total viewing experience, an almost seven –d one, though this was still a significant advance over the previous epochs. As of the “Workings of Political power and dissidence in fartology from George Bush to Bob Avaikan” an obscure underground treatise on the subject which was much adored by the researchers of that time, the real author is as yet not known, though it was supposed to have been written by either a black woman from the Yoruba tribe, or an Alkanazi Jew. The German fart on the net, which some musicologists could relate to the National Socialist musical structures that could be traced to Hexagoner or even before, were also fundamentally related to certain Indian practices in Classical music, which could be seen as further evidence to the long term give and take between anti-egalitarianisms everywhere, though no Fartologist seems to have stumbled upon the subject as yet. A  Dalit researcher in musicology, however seems to have worked on the linkages between the musical score “Aparaadhi Naanalla” and its counterparts in Aryan musical history, though his thesis has not been completed or published, because of peer pressure and lack of proper research support of a monetary kind, due to which he had to shift to the job of a lottery ticket seller.

Proust, Sasser Masoch and the likes seem to have made significant contributions to this gold mine of literary history from which generations of future researchers will surely find enough materials to sustain their arguments through their torturous journey through Fartology or literary history or some other specialist area which is as yet to come into existence. The various strands of medicine have evolved much simpler/ much more complex strategies to gauge the smell of farts and discover new/ already existing variations in health conditions, which they have termed ‘diseases’ and ornithologists and bird watchers have already pushed their noses into the non-human possibilities in fart discourse.

So, as of now, we are in the midst of an already flourishing discourse spread over various disciplines related to the science of Farting, through much of the work done by Madame Boa Boa and her students which have found publication in research journals, these have not as yet found popular audiences according to the pundits with high rise brows who dwell in such sciences as studies of ‘Popular culture’ and so on.

My friend Poulose, a pick pocket from Kerala, laughs at these pronouncements and cite the instance of “Bouvard and Pecuchet” and talks about how the purses picked from back pockets exhibit authorial aromatic traces, and also suggests that an art form based on aromatic notation, one that is purely meant for the nose was already alive among the Baigas around Chanda and also the Pradhan’s around Tila tola on the banks of Narmada somewhere around the seventeenth century. Jong Kung Sung, a Buddhist researcher from communist North Korea also suggest that the Buddhist reckoning of smells were not so structured, delimited and segregated around the thematics of shudhi/ ashudhi, permissible/ taboo etc., and had accounted for the full range of possible and as yet impossible scents, while the brahminical perception of these were somewhat structured and rigid and used to be organized around such inclusion/ exclusions. She suggests from the evidences garnered from the early twentieth century dalit folk songs (‘chandanam vaariyeriyedaa thampraa’,  and ‘kunthirikkam pukakkadaa’) that the practices of incense burning, sandalwood smearing, and so on were actually part of the brahminical bifurcation of the world of scents as high and low, and that it were in such contexts that the politics of fart, especially such as the one seen in Basheer’s literature, provide a clue to the ‘egalitarian and leveling influences of a disruptive fart’.

French experts have still lagged behind in the science of fartology, though Baudelaire, Genet, Proust and many other modernist explorers in the terrain, and movies like ‘La Carribeniers’ have sufficiently highlighted the significance of a perceptive nose. In Spain, the paintings of Heironimus Bosch, splendidly depict the flights of this early bird, and in many major museums around Europe, around the paintings of Bruegel, Jan Steen , K.P. Reji and the like, one may come across as lingering  a whiff of smell that suddenly takes you to another place or time.

Early walkers in my township talk about the early morning as a time when the sense of smell is especially highlighted, pronounced and easily perceptible, while voyeuristic explorers have stories with much more vivid and lurid details around the subject. The smell of farts coming after eating roasted jackfruit nuts, potatos, tuvar dal, peanuts, certain chutneys, ududu vadas, various chicken dishes, pork and tapioca have also found many referances in popular parlance. Fartology is already into a detailed exploration of the tonal variations on the subject, and even individual variations have also been slowly incorporated. Rock troups like ‘The Abba’ had used the sound in its albums, and explorations are on in electronic music to incorporate its potentials into noise music,  varying its length and intensity, controlled and well modulated farts as well as errant ones are well on the way to making their specialized explorations in music and the ‘history of sounds proper(and improper)’ through the works of the fart avante-garde group ‘Saffron Fart. Inc.’. 

‘Everybody’s (note that here the notion of body also gains a certain centrality, while earlier the former part of the word was unduly accentuated) guide to farting’ by Rupert A. Paris  was a typical exploration from the side of management/ personality experts on the subject. The lore about ‘My experiments with smell’ by an unknown writer who calls himself ‘unpoet’ which has been now twenty five years into writing, has been in circulation for quite sometime,  but by now people have almost forgotten about it since it has not still made its appearance. ‘Aromatic international’ a huge corporate firm dealing with all kinds of products, research, development, publications and trading related to the aromatic world  has a great degree of say in the field, though the researchers complaint about the inadequacy of research funds in core areas of interest to humanity and undue prioritizing of economically viable and commercially plausible research such as weapons research in the field. The military researchers from Minnesota and Arizona have deviced new weapons which work with both enticing and revolting smells in elaborate ways to induce responses in the subconscious  mind , using them to further the strategies of authoritarianism and subjugation of the many. The Military Research wings of major countries who have done extensive and secretive  research works on a huge number of topics and people in their pursuit of regimes of total control( ‘The Happiness Project’; ‘The Smell Pop Project’), which could only be accessed by the top level researchers and military/ political personnel. Most of the time the results of such research done in the interests of the State and military to further their designs over the populace, were unknown to the general public, and while active research was going on in programming the human brain and using people like robots was already underway in military research, the civil researchers would still be talking about the responses of mice to external stimuli  and running around with mundane and stupid projects in areas which were well explored long back, with the express purpose of extending the states control over citizens. If and when some military secret of this kind is divulged to the general public, it was either done by some maverick hacker who had occasion to sneak in and discover the trouble there, in some political tit tat between politicians who were into the secrets, or by the espionage systems of another country who wanted to see the demerits in the way their opponents handled their people, though they would themselves be using such strategies on their citizens. The devices to lead thought towards particular directions, to converse in the mind without sound with another person, to tele- prompt responses and so on developed for espionage purposes or space missions since it was impossible  for top level political, military and scientific leadership or intelligence personnel to hold open conversations with each other with the ‘threats’ of leakages of information looming large, since research had advanced as regards technologies useful for the speech /hearing impaired also and since the military industrial complex preferred to keep information about their forays into everyday life of the people, or their grand theatre, set up all around civilian spaces top secret. And the people who like to call themselves intellectuals still talking about advanced research in archaic terms and are totally incapable of understanding the implications and threats that such research produces since they were not visible at all.

 Some of the other contenders include smaller manufacturers, Private projects for specialized research, World Fart Scheme; The Fart and Hindu Mythology Project; The Ukranian Fartist Project,The Pentagon Project for the Eradication of Smells(N.Y), The Chinese Project for The mobilization of Fart; The Police Academy Proposal for the Enquiry into the Role of Farts in Crime detection; The Cambridge Companion to Farting; The Russian Presidents Project for Cleaner Farting, The Queen’s,Master’s & Common Wealth’s Aid for Equitable Farting among British Servants; The Indian Naval Fart Academy; The Hollywood Celebrity Fart Project, Fanny and Alexandra Fart Project  For Research into Bergman films, the Dario Fo and Passolini Institute for Farting(also called ‘The Shitter’s (not Shwitter’s) Academy’);  The Online Fart Club with above three lakh members, The Psychiatric and Psychological institute for Fart Research,  the Malinowski Centre for Farting etc,. Major research journals, Magazines and Publishers specializing in the area include The Klan Fart Journal, The New left Review  of Farts, Journal for Comparative Farting, Farto- Analysis, John Poppins Medical Journal of Fart, Fart- Economy Etc..

The scents From Denmark Academy of Shakespeare research has recently brought out an extensive Bibliography of Fart Related writing  in the Human and Social sciences. The Nationalist and Anti Nationalist project for Planetary farting has also devised certain new instruments for fart measurement like the Gerard Richter Scale, and Researchers at the Berlin Ensemble have devised a ‘Smell tuner and micro producer machine’ for their new Smell Art clientele.

Madame Boa Boa was also famous(even slightly notorious) for her somewhat bold pronouncements regarding the socio-political affairs of her country and the world: ‘Mishraji doesn’t mix” she would say, and the woman who was gazing at her from her bed would burst out into laughter. “Yes, at least he should try to live up to his name, no?”. They were referring to their Brahmin neighbour’s elusiveness towards their somewhat provocative demeanour. Yamini, her girlfriend would pout her lips a bit when she saw him or give him a wink sometimes and smilingly observe the tremors of the shock travelling down his arms as a slow shivering, on which she would go inside hoping that someday he would break with his complacency and just walk in after her. Anuradha, his wife, who was a secret visitor to their abode, and a creature of pleasure, would tell her about his dilemmas and predicaments as a creature of purity and veganism: “This man, you know, with all his punditry, cannot even walk down the street and meet a woman! And you know, he knows much about all those theories of sexuality and all that, and to me it is just a walk next door, or across the street, most of the time and I am virtually uneducated in any of that.” This is how Yamini and Madame Boa Boa came to that generous conclusion  about it. Anuradha herself had grown out of her shyness and chastity problems through the timely instructions from Yamini, her neighbor and Madame’s partner, in their escapades together during the day hours when they were alone at home and were feeling frustrated enough to make out with each other.

 “We Brahmins don’t mix, and Mishraji doesn’t like it that I mix with people outside the household, so I am mostly at home, virtually at the end of my nerves and madly wanting to cuddle around somebody, and there was no other way, and naturally your bedstead was the nearest pasture in which I could graze.”

“Ha, ha… Some rules are better broken with sweet kisses, or else the world will always fall on each other’s back with some war or other”,Yamini  would reply to her, while she dipped her head deeper between her thighs and explored the secret continent by slowly working on the clit. “ I always thought that a clit was somehow related to Cleetus”, ( her first lover and who had an adorable way of making a clit flower.). But when I come to you, I know that the bloom was already there, wet and ready to open, maybe, and it had nothing to do with him!” Anuradha would open her thighs wider to let her tongue search deeper, and slowly they would climb on to the rocky pinnacles of ecstasy reaching which their bodies would become taut as  stretched bows, the tremors of which a Louise Bourgieos sculpture or Bernini’s St.Teresa would covet to excel.

Initially, on some days Anuradha used to feel very down and out, having had to listen terribly bored to her husband’s treatise on the ‘women’s question’  or the ‘class question’ or the ‘caste question’ or his moralizing lectures about questions connected to whether it is politically correct to look out of the window, to look at one’s image in the mirror for long as she used to, to read pulp literature, to go for a movie with a friend, to dress in a voluptuous and sexy manner as she used to do, exposing things a little here and there with due regard for a somewhat frustrated and coveting audience, to watch T.V, to sit with her thighs a bit open, to wear mascara or lipstick or to use the creams and waters which were a regular part of  women’s daily repertory, to have pets around in the house  and so on. Mishraji hated dogs and cats, because in an apartment they were difficult to maintain, but liked the aquarium, from which nothing stood out or caused much obstruction, neatly fitting into the special constraints of a middle class apartment. They lived in the same flat, the Mishra’s on the second and Boa Boa’s on the third floor, just up a flight of stairs. Mishraji was only vaguely aware of the existence of Madame Boa Boa or Yamini, because he used to leave early for work in the accounts department of the company specializing in soft drinks, and  was not usually moving around much during the holidays also, keeping mostly to the apartment. Yamini or Boa Boa never went to their apartment for some reason or other, while on week days Anuradha was a regular visitor to their flat above. Since Anuradha was of a voloptous disposition from her early ages, though without much actual experience in those years, except on a few occasions, when the man who came with the gas cylinder had grabbed at her breasts, or a distant cousin who had come for a short stay had kissed her on her breasts, navel and so on, passing his hands over them, as they had secretly coveted each other for a few days of their stay together. Though she had wanted to continue that relationship, they were unable to meet again due to the severe restrictions set to her movement by her well off family. If it were today, I would have easily moved about in a purdah, outside of their notice and could have easily met him that way, she would say to Yamini. Boa Boa, being an academic and researcher was well informed in matters of all sorts and well instructed in matters of sex would in her early years draw her out of the austerity rituals by playing well with her libidinal cravings and skillfully move her ahead from her complacency on that count. “He doesn’t even have the urge to play with me”, she would say to Boa Boa, and when you play with me it is like a splendorous explosion of fire and colours, that is why I can’t keep away from you.”

“It seems to be like the Common wealth where the commons are deprived of all their wealth and you were so rich in pleasures, no doubt!”.

Madame Boa Boa would say, as she twined around her in the bed while Yamini sat watching. “My advice to any Brahmin girl who faces  your problem will be to burn the ‘Bra’   and to become an Amin or Minh or whatever, without bothering the least about your mixed ragas or mixed blood.”

“Ha ha”, Anuradha would reply, “a splendid idea indeed. At least one would get a better list of prospective lovers, that way!”

2.

Mishraji parked his scooter and went up to the Metro. At the entrance  he looked at the young guy and the lustful woman who kept guard at the two gates. Both were cute people, and the young man was an expert at frisking, taking a long time to frisk people when the rush was not too high. When there was a rush also, he did it effectively, moving the rod with an almost erotic precision around the zones of necessity. He smiled at both, out of curtsey, and also with a certain love and caring, having been regularly travelling that way and meeting them with some regularity. As the man was frisking him, he felt a strange pleasure in his loins, since it had been a long time since he had stood so close to somebody, and the instruments slow move over his body thrilled him and produced in him strange expectations. As an advocate of civil rights, he had often felt that the procedure of frisking involved a strategy of power and an institution which was suspicious of the whole lot of the people who were travelling that way while taking for granted its own privilege to subject any person to a close physical scrutiny. If an institution feels itself privileged to subject to such humiliating and time consuming bull- shit treatment the whole lot of its customers, then as citizens we were also liable to suspect that institutions motivations, he used to tell his friends. But when Sadgopal, the security man’s hands were searching him, there was no doubt that he felt a secret pleasure in it, and he also looked across longingly at the other gate where the woman was standing and watching him, and felt that it would have been really good if he were to be frisked by the woman there. She caught his gaze and suddenly looked away, a slightly different pallor appearing on her face as the blood rushed up there and flooded the face with a certain effervescence.

 “Hi, Sadgopal, why do you appear to be so sad?” He asked.

“The task of a Chitragupta is always hard to accomplish, because the dead pile up, and you have to wake them and draw them out to life again with some pleasure or other. That is why sometime we look like brother and sister grim, though we are not that way in our real lives!” Sadgopal replied.

“Why do you collect these cigarette lighters and match boxes and stuff like that from the commuters? Why don’t you allow them in? I have heard some people complaint against it.”

Mishra asked Sadgopal while he was at it.

“Oh, sir. That is plain and simple, we don’t get much during the searches. And you know, we are supposed to take a few things to fulfill the targets set for us by the institution. And many of us are chain smokers who do not want to pay for the lighters and match- boxes. So that comes handy. Sometimes we find somebody with some booze on them also. We stop them since these things are not allowed on the metro. Sometimes, when they are in a hurry, the guy would leave the bottle with us. Which is one of the sources for some booze sellers here, because they can sell it at a lesser price to their regulars. And you know, we can always have a drink or two while at work, without paying anything. These are really heady facts, aren’t they?” Sadgopal brushed his hands slightly against Mishraji’s butt as he let him through. “And a guy, if he wan’ts to have the drink will take it back and have it somewhere around the station. So some of the vendors who sell some namkeens, plastic cups or cigarettes also benefit from it. Isn’t this all good business?”. The guard shouted after him.

Mishraji could not help congratulating  Sadgopal in his mind while walking on to the platforms. Eventhough he was an accountant himself, he had never thought about the business prospects of such a regulation. “The metro is alive, Long live the metro!” he whispered to himself while moving on.

3.

“Mishraji, you should at least mix some drinks to further our friendship”, this time around Sadgopal was quite categorical. They were sitting in a lodge room and talking to each other. Mishraji had dropped that days work and they were together seated on the bed on which the sheets were in a mess, looking into each other’s eyes. “You have a certain green sheen in your eyes. “ 

“Which could only mean that I am a bit wild”, Sadgopal replied. “And that is very true, also.”

“When I am with you, I also grow wild, Mr.Sadgopal!” he added.

“I liked the smells here’, Sadgopal added. He turned around and sniffed the air around the

room. There was the smell of an after-shave mingled with that of some food  that had got burned while they were busy at it in the next room. Sadgopal played a popular tune from Shivamani on his mobile phone.

“How shall I mix it, this drink that you wan’t?” Mishraji asked Sadgopal. “In love at least, everything is permissible.” So mix something as you like to make it.”

“Oh, usually, I do not drink. And so know very little about drinks.”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter. It only means that you are much more innovative, and am not so much given to habits.” Sadgopal replied.

“So says the sad Gopal, so then I will mix!” Mishraji ran his right hand over Sadgopal’s shaven ace and then felt his own for bristles.

Boa Boa ran out of her toilet and told Yamini. ”I think we need some toilet paper. These ass holes block the water while I am at it, and that is difficult to handle. I just managed with the water that was in the flush. What else to do?. They think that we should be asexual beings, not lesbians , heteros or whatever. And they do not think that they shouldn’t have sex, either. So it is like that, everywhere there are these two sets of laws, one for the people to follow, and another for themselves. We can only laugh at these, when an egalitarian sense is lacking in it, these laws are just bull shit. The only thing that they do is to re establish administrative power and the right to punish. As in the dalit folk song, “we can see the obese lordship lying on the thousand headed snake of infinity” trying to regulate and control him. That is all that is there to it.!”

The pigeons sitting on the terrace wall of the next apartment looked intently at them and started to utter their wooing sounds.