Death by Decibels is No Chicken Feed

One of the downsides of a column earmarked to deal with the funny side(s) of life is that readers can be bound to not take it seriously. So, when we highlight the seriousness of the death of 63 chickens allegedly from intensely loud music, we would appreciate if you don't confuse this with a 'Why did the chicken cross the road?' joke or 'Which came first: the chicken or the egg?' riddle. The fact that a wedding procession accompanied by music blaring from giant speakers at dangerous decibels and booming bass may have caused shock to the denizens of a poultry farm is dead serious on two counts. One, the owner of the farm in Odisha's Balasore district, who had taken a loan of ₹2 lakh to set it up in 2019, needs to be compensated - which the offending neighbour refused, leading the former to file a police complaint. Two, playing music (sic) in ungodly volumes is a growing menace.

Today, it's chickens - the local veterinarian in this case diagnosing shock caused by noise to have killed the chickens. Tomorrow, it can well be elderly or weak-hearted humans. Since civic sense is for the birds in this country, one effective way to stop this aural and cardiac menace is to engage in quasi-qawwali. That could entail countering the bone-jarring cacophony with equally loud bhajans on loudspeakers. Let's see who will dare to silence devotional DJs.