About the Author and the Text

The author

'Poets and Pancakes' was written by Asokamitran, the pen name of the well-known Tamil writer J. Thyagarajan (1931–2017). Asokamitran is regarded as one of the most important figures in modern Tamil literature, admired for his short stories, novels and essays. His style is quiet, precise and gently ironic; he observes ordinary people and everyday situations with a wry, understated humour and a keen eye for human weakness and vanity, but without cruelty. Rather than mocking his subjects harshly, he lets their oddities and pretensions reveal themselves through small, telling details, so that the reader smiles rather than sneers. This same tone of amused, affectionate observation runs all through this piece, which is one of the most enjoyed prose lessons in the CBSE Class 12 English NCERT syllabus (Flamingo).

The work it is drawn from

The lesson is an excerpt from Asokamitran's memoir, a book of recollections titled 'My Years with Boss'. In this book he looks back on the period of his life when he worked at the Gemini Studios in Madras (now Chennai). For several years Asokamitran was employed at the studios in a modest capacity — his official duty being to cut out and file newspaper clippings — which placed him at the lower rungs of the organisation. This lowly position, however, gave him an excellent vantage point: from the sidelines he could watch the whole colourful, hierarchical world of the studio, its stars and its clerks, its artists and its eccentrics, and later set it all down with humour and affection.

The Gemini Studios

Gemini Studios, located in Madras and set up in 1940 by S.S. Vasan, was one of the largest and most influential film-producing organisations of early Indian cinema. It was a busy, famous establishment that employed hundreds of people and turned out popular Tamil films. Because it was so large and well known, it attracted not only actors and technicians but also visitors of every kind, from religious and political groups to foreign guests — a fact that becomes important to the humour of the essay. The studio is presented as a small, self-contained world with its own customs, rivalries and characters.

The meaning of the title

The title 'Poets and Pancakes' brings together two unexpected words. 'Pancake', in the context of the studio, was not a food but the brand name of a make-up material widely used by the studio's make-up artists to prepare the actors for the camera. Great quantities of this Pancake make-up were consumed at Gemini Studios. The 'Poets', meanwhile, refer to the many literary men — poets and would-be writers — who drifted around the studio, some employed there, and to the strange literary and political visitors, including an English poet, who turned up during the author's time. The odd pairing of make-up and poetry in the title captures the essay's mixture of the glamorous and the ordinary, the artistic and the absurd.

Words and expressions to notice