The Middle-aged Office Boy

The 'office boy' of the make-up department is one of the essay's most vivid figures. Despite the title, he was no longer a boy but a man in his early forties. He had joined the studio in his youth full of grand ambitions — to become a star actor, or failing that a screen-writer, director or lyricist — and considered himself a bit of a poet, convinced that his talents were being wasted in a department 'fit only for barbers and perverts'. When none of these dreams came true, he grew resentful and self-pitying, forever grumbling about his lot and barging into the narrator's cubicle to deliver long-winded 'epics'. He blamed all his woes, ignominy and neglect on Kothamangalam Subbu, wishing the direst things for a man who had in t …