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

The Printing Machine by Kalki Koechlin is undoubtedly one of the most powerful videos that you have come across in a long, long time! The talented actress performs a self-written eponymous poem in which she blows to smithereens the umpteen biases and blasé nature of media - broadsheets, tabloids, even magazines, textbooks and social networking sites - when dealing with "women's issues".

Produced by Culture Machine and brought on YouTube by the channel Blush, Kalki's The Printing Machine is a throwback to an earlier, equally castigating video from AIB called It's Your Fault, which too had featured her and Juhi Pandey, a Channel V VJ.

It's all chug chug, whir whir, clak clak clickety clak as Kalki sees it, without the rose-tinted glasses of what some call the "righteous outrage of beautiful people". Media may be a bubble yes, but it's time to pierce it and answer Kalki's unsparing questions.

Here are four instant takeaways from her brilliant and blistering analysis of why media doesn't get women and feminism.

1. Sensational isn't sense

Media's tireless hunt for ever more sensational news items, the endless TRP wars and eyeball-grabbing headlines simply refuses to remember or follow through any tragedy. It's particularly glaring in the case of rape and sexual assault, where unseemly details of the latest incident obscure every memory of what happened to others before.

2. Just stats

We have reduced crimes against women to mere numbers and figures. Whether to wage battles of which city is "safer for women", or which one is the "rape capital", lifeless statistics has replaced sensitive and compassionate handling of the issues in the name of objectivity.

3. More shackles

Kalki says for us Indian Cinderellas, midnight comes way before 12 o'clock! "Beasts riding at nights from Delhi to Pondicherry" don't respect women whether it's at 12 in the afternoon or 12 in the night. And, to quote a memorable line from former Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit, we tell ourselves to "not go out alone at night".

4. Routine affair

We live with rape, molestation, assault, often violent, fatal. Sex crime graph only shows an upward tilt. Unless it's "gang rape" or "heinous murder" in the "heart of Delhi/Mumbai/Kolkata", even newspapers confine such reports to the bottom of an inside page. Who cares?

Actually, we must.   

Hence, Kalki, here's a suggestion.

Write and sing it in Hindi.

And Bengali.

And Marathi.

And Punjabi.

And Tamil.

And Kannada.

And every other Indian language.

So that EVERYONE gets to listen to it. So that you don't end up preaching to the choir.