The Hen Coop of the Neighbourhood: Street Quarrels and the Art of Verbal Warfare

 **1 July 2006**

The neighbourhood is noisy like a hen coop.

Housewives, like ever-cackling hens, are day in and day out pecking into each other's feathers to prove their real, outscoring, troubling worth.

Quarrels over the use of a tiny street square. The filth in the street drain. Comments, remarks over gossip, over rumours, and whatnot.

All they need is just a little trigger, and there is a blasting quarrel.

They know exactly well how to keep themselves busy, and then they drag their husbands into the affair for venting, wishing them to turn the verbal duel into a real fistful one.

It rarely happens because, in modern times, street fights are decided by how many filthy words you can blast out at the top of your voice.

So their husbands too, in accompaniment to the shrill female voices, join with their husky, hoarse shouts and add to the noise.

They don't show any inclination to go for a real physical fight until there are enough spectators, with a good number of those who will jump in to prevent the matter from getting bloody.

Then they shout and writhe in the arms of those who intervene.

The fighters are sure that these good souls won't allow things to turn too bloody, and pretending that they are trying to free themselves from the arms, they keep playing the act of war, peace-shattering the foe with verbal mud, verbal mud.

They leave for their houses after spending their lung power.

But it is quite a spectacle to watch these street fights.

A heady cocktail of cuss words, abuses, comments, sarcasm.

It's good that people keep themselves limited to the verbal aspect of war because, in any case, that is better than breaking each other's heads in the real sense.