- 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.