English (Core) · Ch 6 — Poets and Pancakes
Summary of the Lesson
Summary of the Lesson
'Poets and Pancakes' is a series of loosely linked, humorous recollections about the author's years at the Gemini Studios in Madras. It has no single plot; instead it moves from one memorable feature of studio life to another, each described with gentle irony — exactly the kind of chatty, rambling style this Flamingo Class 12 English chapter is admired for.
The make-up department and 'Pancake'
The essay opens with the studio's make-up department, which used enormous quantities of a make-up material sold under the brand name 'Pancake'. The department was housed on an upper floor of a building said once to have been Robert Clive's stables, and it was fitted with harsh, incandescent lights that made the process of applying make-up hot and uncomfortable — the 'fiery misery' the author speaks of. He notes, with amusement, that this gang of make-up men could turn a decent-looking person into a 'hideous crimson hued monster'.
A picture of national integration
The make-up department, Asokamitran observes, was a striking example of national integration, because its staff came from many different regions and communities of India — a Bengali, a Maharashtrian, a Dharwar Kannadiga, an Andhra, a Madras Indian Christian, an Anglo-Burmese and the usual local Tamils — all working together long before A.I.R. and Doordarshan began broadcasting programmes on national integration.
The strict hierarchy
Within the department there was a rigid pecking order. The chief make-up man attended to the chief actors and actresses, his senior assistant to the 'second' hero and heroine, the junior assistant to the main comedian, and so on down to the crowd players, who were the responsibility of the office boy.
The frustrated office boy
A memorable figure is the 'office boy' of the make-up department — a man in his early forties, who had joined the studio years earlier hoping to become a star actor, or else a screen-writer, director or lyric writer, and who fancied himself a poet. His ambitions had come to nothing, and he was full of resentment. He was convinced that all his woes, ignominy and neglect were due to Kothamangalam Subbu, providing the author with both comedy and a touch of pathos.
Kothamangalam Subbu, the No. 2
Much of the essay is devoted to Kothamangalam Subbu, the studio's remarkably versatile and resourceful man, who effectively ranked second only to the Boss. Subbu was cheerful, loyal and endlessly inventive; he could instantly offer a film-maker a dozen ways of shooting a difficult scene. He was also a poet who wrote 'story poems' in folk diction and a sprawling novel, 'Thillana Mohanambal', and a gifted character actor. His closeness to the Boss and his all-round usefulness made him both admired and envied, and the frustrated office boy in particular resented him.
The legal adviser and the actress
Asokamitran also recalls the studio's legal adviser, a member of the Story Department whom everyone mockingly called 'the opposite'. When a talented but temperamental actress blew over on the sets, the lawyer quietly recorded her tirade and played it back to her; hearing her own voice, the countryside girl was struck dumb and never recovered, and so a brief and brilliant acting career ended. When the Boss later closed the Story Department, the author wryly notes it was 'perhaps the only instance in all human history where a lawyer lost his job because the poets were asked to go home'.
The confusion about communism and the MRA visit
The khadi-clad, Gandhi-worshipping staff had only a vague, caricatured fear of 'Communism'. Into this atmosphere came Frank Buchman's Moral Re-Armament (MRA) army, some two hundred strong, in 1952; the studio hosted them warmly, and their plays 'Jotham Valley' and 'The Forgotten Factor' so impressed the Tamil drama world that its stage effects were imitated for years.