We don’t get an insight from the pages of history or narratives in the land’s epics to infer that invariably a war of words precedes wars with weapons, although incidents of wars in all past having taken place without words being exchanged between the warring parties cannot be excluded as we look back. The virtual wars that the land’s political parties get engaged in to fight the polls for the right and privilege of representing people in the various rule-making bodies from Panchayat to Parliament, mercifully, don’t feature weapons, except an occasional case of gun-shots being fired or knife thrust into unwary citizens under provocation. One doesn’t have to make any effort to learn about the people’s pastime as it were to provoke others, except take a cursory look at the pages reporting such incidents by the dailies of the various languages, including this one. Even women have figured notoriously by their loud-mouthed fracas at the public taps in towns and villages. The languages of the land are not wanting in vocabulary specially meant to provoke warring neighbours, assertive co-passengers, persons who jump the queue and so on.

The global scene is an unmistakable canvas of war of words featuring heads of States across the world, such as the Presidents of the United States of America and North Korea, posing threat to the safety of nations in addition to theirs. Their counterparts in the form of political heavyweights within our country have made the war of words their whole-time pastime, amusing the citizens no end.

Children are known to fight among themselves only when they are annoyed, but they don’t bear grudge for more than a few moments, a lesson which adults have grossly missed. The scores of road shows, marked by large numbers of high-decibel sloganeering protestors taking part in them has virtually stumped the attention of people at large to the many sides to life in society of our times. While the squabbling politicos stand self-ridiculed for their no-holds-barred mud-throwing at their rival detractors and the writer-fraternity berating others in the open have been a daily occurrence, the medical professionals have lately joined in the fray, for reasons putting them at war with the State government. The Police Department has fallen far short of their time of duty and personnel to deal with brawls and consequent criminal acts by various sections of society with its mix of faiths, tongues, ethnicity and so on.

Diseases may be taking a heavy toll of human populations both in the country and the rest of the world. The economic dimension of not keeping a check on words that provoke people to indulge in brawls locally and wars globally cannot hide the shame and decline of human species. Animals, the beautiful people, are managing very well, thanks to their wordless world.