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Poets and Pancakes Final - Removed
Poets and Pancakes Final - Removed
2022-23
in the city are said to have been his residence. For his
brief life and an even briefer stay in Madras, Robert Clive
seems to have done a lot of moving, besides fighting some
impossible battles in remote corners of India and marrying
a maiden in St. Mary’s Church in Fort St. George in
Madras.
The make-up room had the look of a hair-cutting salon
with lights at all angles around half a dozen large mirrors.
They were all incandescent lights, so you can imagine the
fiery misery of those subjected to make-up. The make-up
department was first headed by a Bengali who became too
big for a studio and left. He was succeeded by a
Maharashtrian who was assisted by a Dharwar Kannadiga,
an Andhra, a Madras Indian Christian, an Anglo-Burmese
and the usual local Tamils. All this shows that there was a
great deal of national integration long before A.I.R. and
Doordarshan began broadcasting programmes on national
integration. This gang of nationally integrated make-up men
could turn any decent-looking person into a hideous crimson
hued monster with the help of truck-loads of pancake and a
number of other locally made potions and lotions. Those
were the days of mainly indoor shooting, and only five
per cent of the film was shot outdoors. I suppose the sets
and studio lights needed the girls and boys to be made to
look ugly in order to look presentable in the movie. A strict
hierarchy was maintained in the
make-up department. The chief
make-up man made the chief actors
and actresses ugly, his senior
assistant the ‘second’ hero and
heroine, the junior assistant the
main comedian, and so forth. The
players who played the crowd were
the responsibility of the office boy.
(Even the make-up department of the
Gemini Studio had an ‘office boy’!)
On the days when there was a crowd-
shooting, you could see him mixing
his paint in a giant vessel and
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slapping it on the crowd players. The idea was to close every
pore on the surface of the face in the process of applying
make-up. He wasn’t exactly a ‘boy’; he was in his early forties,
having entered the studios years ago in the hope of becoming
a star actor or a top screen writer,
director or lyrics writer. He was a
bit of a poet.
In those days I worked in a
cubicle, two whole sides of which
were French windows. (I didn’t
know at that time they were called
French windows.) Seeing me
sitting at my desk tearing up
newspapers day in and day out,
most people thought I was doing
next to nothing. It is likely that
the Boss thought likewise too. So
anyone who felt I should be given
some occupation would barge into
my cubicle and deliver an extended lecture. The ‘boy’ in the
make-up department had decided I should be enlightened
on how great literary talent was being allowed to go waste
in a department fit only for barbers and perverts. Soon I
was praying for crowd-shooting all the time. Nothing short
of it could save me from his epics.
In all instances of frustration, you will always find
the anger directed towards a single person openly or covertly
and this man of the make-up department was convinced
that all his woes, ignominy and neglect were due to
Kothamangalam Subbu. Subbu was the No. 2 at Gemini
Studios. He couldn’t have had a more encouraging opening
in films than our grown-up make-up boy had. On the
contrary he must have had to face more uncertain and
difficult times, for when he began his career, there were
no firmly established film producing companies or studios.
Even in the matter of education, specially formal education,
Subbu couldn’t have had an appreciable lead over our boy.
But by virtue of being born a Brahmin — a virtue, indeed!
— he must have had exposure to more affluent situations
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and people. He had the ability to look cheerful at all times
even after having had a hand in a flop film. He always had
work for somebody — he could never do things on his own
— but his sense of loyalty made him identify himself with
his principal completely and turn his entire creativity to
his principal’s advantage. He was tailor-made for films.
Here was a man who could be inspired when commanded.
“The rat fights the tigress underwater and kills her but
takes pity on the cubs and tends them lovingly — I don’t
know how to do the scene,” the producer would say and
Subbu would come out with four ways of the rat pouring
affection on its victim’s offspring. “Good, but I am not sure
it is effective enough,” the producer would say and in a
minute Subbu would come out with fourteen more
alternatives. Film-making must have been and was so easy
with a man like Subbu around and if ever there was a man
who gave direction and definition to Gemini Studios during
its golden years, it was Subbu. Subbu had a separate
identity as a poet and though he was certainly capable of
more complex and higher forms, he deliberately chose to
address his poetry to the masses. His success in films
overshadowed and dwarfed his literary achievements — or
so his critics felt. He composed several truly original ‘story
poems’ in folk refrain and diction and also wrote a sprawling
novel Thillana Mohanambal with dozens of very deftly etched
characters. He quite successfully recreated the mood and
manner of the Devadasis of the early 20th century. He
was an amazing actor — he never aspired to the lead roles
— but whatever subsidiary role he played in any of the
films, he performed better than the supposed main players.
He had a genuine love for anyone he came across and his
house was a permanent residence for dozens of near and
far relations and acquaintances. It seemed against Subbu’s
nature to be even conscious that he was feeding and
supporting so many of them. Such a charitable and
improvident man, and yet he had enemies! Was it because
he seemed so close and intimate with The Boss? Or was it
his general demeanour that resembled a sycophant’s? Or
his readiness to say nice things about everything? In any
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case, there was this man in the make-up department who
would wish the direst things for Subbu.
You saw Subbu always with The Boss but in the
attendance rolls, he was grouped under a department called
the Story Department comprising a lawyer and an assembly
of writers and poets. The lawyer was also officially known
as the legal adviser, but everybody referred to him as the
opposite. An extremely talented actress, who was also
extremely temperamental, once blew over on the sets. While
everyone stood stunned, the lawyer quietly switched on
the recording equipment. When the actress paused for
breath, the lawyer said to her, “One minute, please,” and
played back the recording. There was nothing incriminating
or unmentionably foul about the actress’s tirade against
the producer. But when she heard her voice again through
the sound equipment, she was struck dumb. A girl from
the countryside, she hadn’t gone through all the stages of
worldly experience that generally precede a position of
importance and sophistication that she had found herself
catapulted into. She never quite recovered from the terror
she felt that day. That was the end of a brief and brilliant
acting career — the legal adviser,
who was also a member of the
Story Department, had
unwittingly brought about that
sad end. While every other
member of the Department wore
a kind of uniform — khadi dhoti
with a slightly oversized and
clumsily tailored white khadi
shirt — the legal adviser wore
pants and a tie and sometimes a
coat that looked like a coat of
mail. Often he looked alone and
helpless — a man of cold logic in
a crowd of dreamers — a neutral
man in an assembly of Gandhiites
and khadiites. Like so many of those who were close to
The Boss, he was allowed to produce a film and though a
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lot of raw stock and pancake were used on it, not much
came of the film. Then one day The Boss closed down the
Story Department and this was perhaps the only instance
in all human history where a lawyer lost his job because
the poets were asked to go home.
Gemini Studios was the favourite haunt of poets like
S.D.S.Yogiar3, Sangu Subramanyam, Krishna Sastry and
Harindranath Chattopadhyaya4. It had an excellent mess
which supplied good coffee at all times of the day and for
most part of the night. Those were the days when Congress
rule meant Prohibition and meeting over a cup of coffee
was rather satisfying entertainment. Barring the office boys
and a couple of clerks, everybody else at the Studios
radiated leisure, a pre-requisite for poetry. Most of them
wore khadi and worshipped Gandhiji but beyond that they
had not the faintest appreciation for political thought of
any kind. Naturally, they were all averse to the term
‘Communism’. A Communist was a godless man — he had
no filial or conjugal love; he had no compunction about
killing his own parents or his children; he was always out
to cause and spread unrest and violence among innocent
and ignorant people. Such notions which prevailed
everywhere else in South India at that time also, naturally,
floated about vaguely among the khadi-clad poets of Gemini
Studios. Evidence of it was soon forthcoming.
When Frank Buchman’s Moral Re-Armament army,
some two hundred strong, visited Madras sometime in 1952,
they could not have found a warmer host in India than the
Gemini Studios. Someone called the group an international
circus. They weren’t very good on the trapeze and their
acquaintance with animals was only at the dinner table,
but they presented two plays in a most professional manner.
Their ‘Jotham Valley’ and ‘The Forgotten Factor’ ran several
shows in Madras and along with the other citizens of the
city, the Gemini family of six hundred saw the plays over
and over again. The message of the plays were usually
plain and simple homilies, but the sets and costumes were
first-rate. Madras and the Tamil drama community were
3. A freedom fighter and a national poet.
4. A poet and a playwright.
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terribly impressed and for some years almost all Tamil
plays had a scene of sunrise and sunset in the manner of
‘Jotham Valley’ with a bare stage, a white background
curtain and a tune played on the flute. It was some years
later that I learnt that the MRA was a kind of counter-
movement to international Communism and the big bosses
of Madras like Mr. Vasan simply played into their hands. I
am not sure however, that this was indeed the case, for
the unchangeable aspects of these big bosses and
their enterprises remained the same, MRA or no MRA,
international Communism or no international Communism.
The staff of Gemini Studios had a nice time hosting two
hundred people of all hues and sizes of at least twenty
nationalities. It was such a change from the usual collection
of crowd players waiting to be slapped with thick layers of
make-up by the office-boy in the make-up department.
A few months later, the telephone lines of the big bosses
of Madras buzzed and once again we at Gemini Studios
cleared a whole shooting stage to welcome another visitor.
All they said was that he was a poet from England. The
only poets from England the simple Gemini staff knew or
heard of were Wordsworth and Tennyson; the more literate
ones knew of Keats, Shelley and Byron; and one or two
might have faintly come to know of someone by the name
Eliot. Who was the poet visiting the Gemini Studios now?
“He is not a poet. He is an editor. That’s why The Boss
is giving him a big reception.” Vasan was also the editor of
the popular Tamil weekly Ananda Vikatan.
He wasn’t the editor of any of the known names of
British publications in Madras, that is, those known at
the Gemini Studios. Since the top men of The Hindu were
taking the initiative, the surmise was that the poet was
the editor of a daily — but not from The Manchester Guardian
or the London Times. That was all that even the most well-
informed among us knew.
At last, around four in the afternoon, the poet (or the
editor) arrived. He was a tall man, very English, very serious
and of course very unknown to all of us. Battling with half
a dozen pedestal fans on the shooting stage, The Boss read
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out a long speech. It was obvious
that he too knew precious little
about the poet (or the editor). The
speech was all in the most general
terms but here and there it was
peppered with words like ‘freedom’
and ‘democracy’. Then the poet
spoke. He couldn’t have addressed a
more dazed and silent audience —
no one knew what he was talking
about and his accent defeated any
attempt to understand what he was
saying. The whole thing lasted about
an hour; then the poet left and we
all dispersed in utter bafflement —
what are we doing? What is an
English poet doing in a film studio
which makes Tamil films for the
simplest sort of people? People whose
lives least afforded them the
possibility of cultivating a taste for English poetry? The poet
looked pretty baffled too, for he too must have felt the sheer
incongruity of his talk about the thrills and travails of an
English poet. His visit remained an unexplained mystery.
The great prose-writers of the world may not admit it,
but my conviction grows stronger day after day that prose-
writing is not and cannot be the true pursuit of a genius.
It is for the patient, persistent, persevering drudge with a
heart so shrunken that nothing can break it; rejection
slips don’t mean a thing to him; he at once sets about
making a fresh copy of the long prose piece and sends it on
to another editor enclosing postage for the return of the
manuscript. It was for such people that The Hindu had
published a tiny announcement in an insignificant corner
of an unimportant page — a short story contest organised
by a British periodical by the name The Encounter. Of course,
The Encounter wasn’t a known commodity among the Gemini
literati. I wanted to get an idea of the periodical before I
spent a considerable sum in postage sending a manuscript
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