Poets and Pancakes
by Asokamitran
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An excerpt from Asokamitran's 'My Years with Boss', this humorous account describes his experiences at the Gemini Studios, Madras, one of the most influential film-producing organisations of the early days of Indian cinema. Written in a light, satirical vein, it describes 'Pancake' (the Max Factor make-up brand used at the studio), the elaborate make-up department that could make even a decent-looking person ugly, the office boy who aspired to be an actor or writer, the legal adviser who inadvertently ended a promising actress's career, and the studio's confused response to visitors like the poet Stephen Spender and a Moral Rearmament Army (MRA) troupe. The author, whose job of cutting newspaper clippings was thought to be idleness, gently satirises the vanity, politics and quirks of the studio while capturing an important slice of film history.
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The essay is a gently satirical, autobiographical sketch of life at the Gemini Studios. Through humour and irony, Asokamitran captures the personalities, vanities and contradictions of a great film studio.
Pancake and the make-up department
'Pancake' was the brand name of the Max Factor make-up used in truckloads at Gemini Studios. The make-up department, once in a building believed to be Robert Clive's stable, was run by a strange hierarchy of men from different regions and could make any decent-looking person 'ugly' under its cruel, hot lights.
The office boy and the author's job
A frustrated 'office boy', actually a grown man, had joined hoping to become a star actor, screenwriter, director or lyricist, and blamed his failure on people like Kothamangalam Subbu. The author's own quiet task of cutting and filing newspaper clippings was thought by others to be doing nothing, making him a target of mild resentment.
Subbu and the legal adviser
Kothamangalam Subbu was the No. 2 at Gemini, a charitable, talented, loyal man devoted to 'The Boss', though he attracted envy. The 'legal adviser', a lawyer in the Story Department, was ironically an 'illegal adviser' who once, by playing a recorded outburst of a temperamental actress, unwittingly and permanently ended her acting career.
Poets, politics and puzzling visitors
Most people at Gemini wore khadi and worshipped Gandhi but had a vague hatred of communism. When a Moral Rearmament Army (MRA) troupe visited with plays like 'Jotham Valley', it strongly influenced Tamil drama. Later the English poet Stephen Spender visited; no one understood his speech or why an English poet had come, and only years later did the author discover, through 'The God That Failed', that Spender was connected with the anti-communist theme, resolving a long-standing puzzle.