INDImag – Contemporary fiction | Motivational short stories | Social stories | Short story criticism

He was a modest god, was Stroman, the god of farts. He preferred to refer to himself as the king of farts, because the term god was over-used, and kings in the modern world were much rarer. His godly duties did not amount to much and in the hierarchy of gods, he was somewhere close to the bottom. He didn’t mind that; he was content to go about his own way, not concerning himself with the politics and the conspiracies that were part of a regular god’s life.

And now, he had found out that his only son had died. It was a strange tale, how he begat his son, and one that did not have any spiritual undertones. Thirty years back he had taken to travelling in a bus that transited between Elco Street and Coromandel Road for no particular reason. He was not required to be omni-present; over time, the regulation of farts of all shapes and sizes had become a mostly mundane affair, and his role was more of that of an accountant – to credit and debit appropriately at the end of the year. So he had a lot of time on his hands that he would idle away riding buses and trains.

This bus had a female bus conductor – an obese woman who had great difficulty in walking up and down the aisle of the bus to issue tickets. Once all the rounds for the day were over, she’d collapse in the rear-most seat to recover from the day’s troubles. Stroman had observed her and found himself inexplicably drawn to her. One evening, he did not get off after the bus had been deposited at its nightly terminal. Once the conductor had regained her strength, she noticed him sitting in one of the middle rows, his legs idly swinging in the aisle, looking at her. His face was a strange mixture of calmness and tension – perhaps it was the effect of the silver grey hair, that he wore long and unruly, contrasting with a smooth face full of clean lines and angles. He stood up and walked to her; smiled, offering her his arm to help her up. Instead, she pulled him down to her. They made tepid, uncomfortable love in the back seat of the bus, and once it was over, Stroman smiled at her again, and walked away, leaving behind a strange, pungent smell.

Now, Stroman had had many conquests – not least in the days when the earth was young, and when a god such as himself was far more important. In the pagan lands south of the equator, there were many tribes of people who considered breaking wind an important element of life and celebrated the glorious variety of the act with elaborate rituals. Among such tribes, he was much sought after, and he got his pick of women to take to his bed. However, no such union had ever resulted in progeny, and the encounter with the fat bus conductor was a first. It was only eight months later – by which time he had emigrated from the land of Elco Street and Coromandel Road in search of a lost tribe somewhere in the Himalayas – that he acquired knowledge of the imminent birth of his son. Even lesser gods are capable of knowing distant truths once they set their mind to it, and this particular situation, in Stroman’s scheme of things was quite important.

Stroman did what any god would do – he abdicated responsibility. He never went back to his lover or his child and instead put as much distance as he possibly could between them and him. He also started using protection.

Through the years, he’d tracked the progress of his son – sometimes, other gods would tell him about him, at other times, he’d meditate and the news would travel to him through the wind. His son, named Permanu, didn’t amount to much. He was fat and lazy, and he had an appetite that’d shame the goddess of gluttony herself. He grew up drifting here and there, ignored his mother’s guidance and scorn, and wasted away till he died of cardiac arrest at the age of thirty. Stroman was not proud of him, but he was his son after all.

Stroman decided to go his son’s funeral and reached the airport to board his flight. As he lounged around in the business lounge, he met the god of Chinese whispers, and they played a game which Stroman won. He was pleased with himself as he climbed aboard the airplane. He preferred to travel in the economy section due to an inferiority complex he’d harboured since the time he was asked to vacate his business class seat by the mother of the god of voodoo and witchcraft. Besides, he liked to spend his time calculating precisely the carbon footprint of each passenger in the aircraft. It was an in-joke between him and some other gods that over seven percent of global warming was caused by farts, and by extension, him, and that no one ever bothered to investigate that as part of their climate change agenda.

He looked at the air-hostess as she went through the elaborate safety instructions and smiled inwardly. Little did the humans know that a god was among them and that was enough safety for the duration of the flight. Not that gods were immortal – but it was rare for gods to die in accidents. The last known god-death was when the god of snot was stoned to death by a group of particularly vicious, snot-infested children. He looked around and saw an old man pray just as the airplane took off, and a small child weep inconsolably as it ascended jerkily. He relaxed back in his seat, sipping a glass of wine.

The first waves of turbulence woke him. He looked outside and saw a serious bevy of clouds madly dashing somewhere, He wondered what the commotion might be about – was there a storm party to attend somewhere? A village to be flooded perhaps? Gods rolled the dice all the time, particularly the ones concerned with weather.

The airplane banked; then banked again. Then fell. While screams and prayers filled the aircraft, Stroman calmly unbuckled his seat belt, stood up and beamed. He caught the eye of an attractive air-hostess who was pretending to be unworried but the underarms of her blouse stained with worry-sweat betrayed her fear. The god of farts has few powers, and stalling a falling airplane is not one of them. So he did what he could and let rip one. He intended to silence the panic. Instead, because he was an old god who didn’t know how to calibrate his power, the ripples from his actions shattered the windows and blew the door of the aircraft out.

Stroman knew then that the game was up. He was bemused at this unexpected end but he faced his upcoming death with equanimity. He thought about the mother of his son and felt a brief pang of love. He thought about his dead son – and he knew the dead just go away, there’s no afterlife or reckoning or judgment – they just go away. Like he would now. They’d then nominate a new god of farts – though it was more a punishment posting than an elevation. What young gods aspired to was something cooler – like becoming the sheikh of electronica and dance music.

He needed a final symbolic act – unseen it may be but it had to be something. Something that would punctuate his life. He racked his brains and came up with nothing. So instead, as the airplane crashed into the earth, he struck his chest out and let out a mighty roar – the least he could do as he went out was make some noise.

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