Furore over Fart

Police is looking for a man in Poland who jumped bail after being arrested for insulting the head of the state. He did not have much respect for the President and his brother and when asked to apologise for his loose remarks about them, he farted loudly in the presence of police officers: at which he was arrested.

Real, funny and sardonic, isn't it?

Before the Victorian social norms cast its long shadow over much of the globe and colonised the minds and bodies of the colonised, bodily functions were a form of modeof protest against the high and the mighty especially in complex and hierarchical societies.

Earliest record of such modes of protest to my knowledge goes back to the late 17th century when the Jats apparently desecrated the tomb of Akbar protesting against the Mughal authority [desecreated in Victorian English means defacated]

Later, this was also adopted as a mode of protest by the plantation workers across the globe. In India, this urnating and defacating and plunging them into the burra sahib's bungalows was quite popular.

The practice can not be said to have died out totally. Growing up in Bihar in the 1980s I came to learn early that no one took punga with the Municipal "Bhangis/mehtars" and generously gave them Bakhshish whether they carried out their chores or not. The reason, you would not want a can of nightsoil emptied in from your door in the morning!

This seems to be a global phenomenon which seems to have outlived the Victorian diktats! Here goes an old Sudanese proverb: "When the great lord passes, the poor peasant bows deeply and loudly farts!

My take: Farting is a serious and real mechanism of venting grievances, Let a thousand farts ring!