Kalki's powerful poem lays bare India's brutality

• The Printing Machine
•  
• Chrrrchrrrchrrreee
• Goes the steady printing machine
•  
• Chrrring bloody scenes into bold black ink,
• Chrrring headlines that make us glug
• glug our drink,
• Chrrring crimes against women,
• (Steep rise in ink.)
• Gang raped Japanese tourist,
• (International stink stink.)
• Strip searched for menstruating,
• (Blink blink.)
• Irom force-fed from starving
• (Think, think)
• Child raped by politician,
• (Ka'chingka'ching.)
•  
• Chrrrchrrrchrrreee
• The machine harps happily
•  
• And we drink to ink
• That makes our stomach sink
• And teaches us to fear
•  
• Everything.
•  
• Fear the beasts riding the nights
• From Delhi to Pondicherry,
• Cat calling, wowing, growling,
• Grrrgrrrgrrring.
• Beasts of poverty,
• Beasts on a shopping spree,
• 'Its midnight Cinderella'
• 'Its ten o'clock you dirty fella.'
• Oh hell it really doesn't matter,
• It was afternoon in the warehouse and nobody heard her,
• There's was just grrgrrgrrring
• Growing louder and louder
• And the machine chrrrchrrrchrrring
• Faster and faster.
• Chrrring a nation that prides itself in the hanging of four men
• Five if you count the suicide bastard.
• Chrrrchrrrchrrring a village dangling
• Of two girls, like pin up dolls, upon a tree.
•  
• Chrrrchrrrchrrreee
• Goes our busy printing machine
• Till heads pile up in our hands
• Printed crisp and clean on our newspaper stands
• And blend smoothly into our morning routine.
• Heads for one side or another
• Like a black and white marketplace,
• Two heads for four,
• Four heads more,
• Enough heads to start a war,
• Chrrrchrrrrchrrring one after another
• How many heads are we after?
•  
• And when you think its over,
• When the machine stops with a sudden chrrreee
•  
• Wait a little
• Wait patiently
•  
• It's just readying
• To chrrr at textbooks of rewritten histories
• Of dissected countries
• Of majorities and popular beliefs,
• And then the
• Long
• Slow
• Chrrr
•  
• Of italics
• In roman prints
• Of sweeping statements made by official establishments
• To take safety precautions and make improvements
• Based on moral views and religious sentiments
• Of political convenience.
• Chrrring out the marks of sin
• Cut out of the clothes you're in,
• The men with whom you've been,
• The colour of your skin,
• Speaking of which...
•  
• Chrrring horizontal lines vertically,
• To pay for print
• In soft baby pink
• The pleasant opening page
• Revealing a'Fair and Lovely' face,
• Which melts slowly
• A few pages on
• With the rise of acid sales.
•  
• Chrrrchrrrchreee
• Our machine sings obliviously
•  
• Chrrring magazines
• With shiny sheens
• To accommodate setups socially serene,
• A world we can buy into,
• A dream we can hang onto,
• A love that divides one into two
• Values that depend on what others think of you
• And you know the tune,
• You are what you say and not what you do,
• So keep tap tap tapping
• On keyboards computing
• Virtual drawing rooms of communicating
•  
• Tap taptweet.
• Tap tap sweet.
• Tap tap texting.
• Tap tapemoticoning.
•  
• Whilst our machine
• Keeps chrrrchrrrchrrring
•  
• Background scores to our scenes,
• Chrrring fantastical Bollywood dreams and glory
• Based on Box office stories,
• Chrrring carefully formulated plots of success
• Pots of money
• And lots of business,
• Chrrring us to smile at rocks
• And call them diamonds,
• And honey,
• Chrrring us into late life disappointments
• And life long resentments...
•  
• Chrrrchrrrchrrreee, the family you marry,has nothing to do
• Chrrrchrrrchrrrooo,
• With the man you woo.
• Chrrrchrrrchrrraaa, to underwear and bra,
• Ladies can't fight seriously in lingerie,
• So hurrah hurrah,
• Let's throw her a bikini
• Everytime she raises her head defiantly,
• You see,
• God forbids multiplicity
• For a woman in our society.
•  
• Chrrrchrrrchrrreee goes our precious printing machine
• Chrrring what it sees, chrrring non chalantly
•  
• Chrrring sadness, fatness and mental illness
• As reasons for unhappiness,
• Chrrringmedication that sedates you into stillness
• Chrrring you to mask your nakedness
• By wearing
• Less
• And
• Less.
•  
• Chrrring bitterness in mothers
• Like slow venom seeping into future generations,
• The quiet revenge of the weaker sex
• From behind the guise of a tear stained Kleenex.
• Chrrrchrrrchreeee
• Chrrrchrrrchreeee
• Chrrring little brats that grow into men,
• Chrrring little ladies who use hearts to pretend
• And find ways to manipulate and defend
• Themselves
• From thegrrgrrgrrring beasts
• Of Darwin's survival of the fittesttheories,
• Until our existence becomes an endless series
• Of chrrrchrrrchrreees.
•  
• Chrrrchrrr dailies,
• Chrrrchrrr weeklies,
• Chrrrchrrr stories that becomes our histories,
•  
• Which, oh, in irony of all ironies,
• Will one day reveal
• How our great Indian heritage
• Fell to its knees
•  
• At the mercy of innocent
• Little
• Printing machines.

Also read: 4 takeaways from Kalki's 'mind-blowing' feminist rap. And a strong suggestion