Chapter poets-and-pancakes: Poets and Pancakes | Summary

Poets and Pancakes is a delightful excerpt from Asokamitran’s book, My Years with Boss. The chapter offers an insightful and humorous peek into the working of Gemini Studios, one of India’s most influential film-producing organizations in the early days of cinema, founded by S.S. Vasan in Chennai. The author’s job was to cut and file newspaper clippings, which made others think he did almost nothing. However, this position allowed him to observe the studio's vivid characters and eccentricities closely. The title refers to the truckloads of 'Pancake' makeup the studio bought and the many self-proclaimed poets who hung around the premises. The narrative begins with the makeup department, an example of national integration, where people from different states worked together to turn decent-looking actors into crimson-hued monsters under blazing incandescent lights. Here, we meet the 'office boy', a man in his forties who joined to become a star or director but ended up slapping makeup on crowd players. Frustrated by his unrealized dreams, he directed all his anger at Kothamangalam Subbu, the studio's No. 2 man. Subbu is portrayed as a multifaceted genius. Despite lacking formal education, his cheerful demeanor, extraordinary creativity, and immense loyalty to the Boss made him indispensable. He could come up with countless ways to shoot a scene and was a talented poet and actor who supported many relatives. However, his closeness to the Boss earned him enemies like the office boy. Another fascinating character is the legal adviser, a man of cold logic in a crowd of dreamers. He stood out in his western clothes amidst khadi-wearing Gandhiites and unintentionally ruined a brilliant young actress's career by recording her temper tantrum. The chapter also explores the political climate of the time. The studio staff, mostly ignorant of politics, abhorred Communism. This made them welcome the Moral Re-Armament (MRA) army, a group spreading anti-Communist messages through impressive stage plays. Later, an English poet visited the studio, delivering a speech that no one understood due to his accent and obscure subject matter, leaving his visit an unsolved mystery. Years later, Asokamitran discovered the visitor was Stephen Spender, an English poet and former Communist sympathizer. He found Spender's name in a British periodical, The Encounter, and later in a book titled The God That Failed, which detailed writers' disillusionment with Communism. This discovery finally unraveled the mystery of Spender's visit to a Tamil film studio. Through gentle humour and sharp observation, Asokamitran captures the human foibles, artistic struggles, and quirky realities of the cinematic world.