Poets and Pancakes (CH-6) Notes – Class 12 English Flamingo Chapter 6

In this post we have given the Notes of Class 12 English Flamingo Chapter 6 Poets and Pancakes (by Asokamitran). These are useful for students preparing for their Class 12 board exams.

इस पोस्ट में कक्षा 12 अंग्रेज़ी (Flamingo) के पाठ 6 Poets and Pancakes के नोट्स दिए गए हैं। यह उन सभी विद्यार्थियों के लिए उपयोगी है जो इस वर्ष कक्षा 12 की बोर्ड परीक्षा देने वाले हैं।

अध्याय का सार हिंदी में (Chapter Summary in Hindi)

“Poets and Pancakes” तमिल लेखक अशोकमित्रन (Asokamitran) की पुस्तक “My Years with Boss” का एक अंश है। इसमें लेखक चेन्नई (मद्रास) के जेमिनी स्टूडियो (Gemini Studios) में बिताए अपने दिनों की यादें हल्के-फुल्के, मज़ेदार अंदाज़ में सुनाते हैं। जेमिनी स्टूडियो की स्थापना 1940 में एस.एस. वासन (S.S. Vasan) ने की थी, जिन्हें पूरे पाठ में “The Boss” कहा गया है। लेखक का काम अख़बारों की कतरनें (newspaper clippings) काटकर फ़ाइलों में रखना था।

“Pancake” उस मेक-अप सामग्री का ब्रांड नाम था जो स्टूडियो ट्रक भर-भरकर ख़रीदता था। मेक-अप विभाग में बंगाली, महाराष्ट्रीयन, कन्नड़, आंध्र, एंग्लो-बर्मी और तमिल लोग साथ काम करते थे, इसे लेखक मज़ाक में “राष्ट्रीय एकता” (national integration) कहते हैं। वहाँ का “ऑफ़िस बॉय” लगभग चालीस साल का आदमी था, जो कभी बड़ा अभिनेता या लेखक बनने आया था। अपनी असफलता का सारा गुस्सा वह कोत्तमंगलम सुब्बु (Kothamangalam Subbu) पर निकालता था।

सुब्बु स्टूडियो में “नंबर दो” थे। वे कवि, उपन्यासकार, अभिनेता और कहानी की हर समस्या का तुरंत हल निकालने वाले व्यक्ति थे, और बहुत उदार भी। वे Story Department में थे, जिसमें कवियों-लेखकों के साथ एक वकील भी था। उस वकील ने एक बार एक अभिनेत्री का गुस्सा चुपचाप रिकॉर्ड करके उसे सुना दिया, जिससे वह डर गई और उसका अभिनय करियर ख़त्म हो गया। बाद में बॉस ने पूरा Story Department ही बंद कर दिया।

1952 में Moral Re-Armament (MRA) का लगभग दो सौ लोगों का दल मद्रास आया और जेमिनी स्टूडियो ने उनका ख़ूब स्वागत किया। कुछ महीने बाद इंग्लैंड से एक “कवि” आए, जिनकी बातें वहाँ कोई समझ नहीं पाया। बरसों बाद लेखक को पता चला कि वे स्टीफ़न स्पेंडर (Stephen Spender) थे, The Encounter पत्रिका के संपादक। फिर “The God That Failed” नाम की किताब से पता चला कि स्पेंडर कभी साम्यवाद (Communism) से जुड़े थे और उससे उनका मोहभंग हो चुका था। तब लेखक को समझ आया कि बॉस ने उनका स्वागत उनकी कविता के कारण नहीं, बल्कि साम्यवाद-विरोधी सोच के कारण किया होगा।

इस पाठ का संदेश यह है कि फ़िल्मी दुनिया की चमक-दमक (pancake) और साहित्य की दुनिया (poets) एक-दूसरे से टकराती तो हैं, पर एक-दूसरे को पूरी तरह समझ नहीं पातीं। लेखक यह सब हल्के हास्य (gentle humour) और व्यंग्य (irony) के साथ कहते हैं।

The Writer and the Setting

Asokamitran (1931–2017) was a well-known Tamil writer. For several years he worked at Gemini Studios in Chennai (then Madras), and he later wrote about that period in his book My Years with Boss. “Poets and Pancakes” is only a part (an excerpt) of that book. The textbook places it under the theme of events and personalities in a film company during the early days of Indian cinema, with a focus on poets and writers working in such a place.

Gemini Studios was founded in 1940 by S.S. Vasan, who is called simply “The Boss” in the chapter. The author’s own job was modest: he cut out newspaper clippings on many subjects and kept them in files, often writing them out by hand. He worked in a small cubicle with French windows on two sides. Because his work looked like tearing up newspapers all day, people thought he did almost nothing, yet, as the chapter suggests, this reading made him one of the best-informed members of the “Gemini family”.

What “Pancake” means: Pancake was the brand name of the make-up material that Gemini Studios bought in truck-loads. The author jokes that famous actresses like Greta Garbo, Miss Gohar and Vyjayantimala must have used it, while a later actress like Rati Agnihotri may never even have heard of it.

How the Chapter Moves: One Memory Leads to Another

This piece does not follow one plot. It is a chain of connected memories. The textbook itself describes its style as chatty and rambling: one thought leads to the next, and the writer stays with each for a while. The order is roughly:

1. The make-up department and its middle-aged “office boy”.
2. The office boy’s anger, which falls on Kothamangalam Subbu.
3. Subbu’s many talents and his place as No. 2 at the studio.
4. The Story Department, its poets and its lone lawyer, and the actress whose career ended.
5. The khadi-wearing poets and their vague fear of Communism.
6. The visit of the Moral Re-Armament (MRA) group in 1952.
7. The visit of an unknown English “poet” a few months later, which nobody understands.
8. The author later recognising this visitor as Stephen Spender, editor of The Encounter.
9. Years later, a cheap copy of The God That Failed finally explains the mystery.

The Make-Up Department

The make-up department was on the upper floor of a building that people believed had once been Robert Clive’s stables. (The author adds, with a smile, that a dozen other buildings in Madras also claim to have been Clive’s home.) The room looked like a hair-cutting salon. Large mirrors were surrounded by very bright incandescent lights, so anyone being made up there suffered under the heat, which the author calls a “fiery misery”.

The staff came from all over the country. The department was first led by a Bengali, who later left, and then by a Maharashtrian, helped by a Kannadiga from Dharwar, an Andhra, an Indian Christian from Madras, an Anglo-Burmese and local Tamils. The writer remarks that this was national integration long before All India Radio and Doordarshan started broadcasting programmes about it. This is a clear example of his gentle humour: an everyday fact is given a sly, bigger meaning.

There was a strict order of work. The chief make-up man worked on the leading actors and actresses; his senior assistant did the “second” hero and heroine; the junior assistant handled the main comedian; and the office boy did the crowd players. For the crowd, the office boy mixed the paint in a huge vessel and slapped it on their faces so that every pore was closed.

The “Office Boy” Who Was a Bit of a Poet

The “office boy” was not a boy at all. He was in his early forties. Years earlier he had joined the studio hoping to become a star actor, or a top screenwriter, director or lyric writer. None of this happened, and the author describes him as “a bit of a poet”.

Since the author’s work looked like doing nothing, the office boy often came to his cubicle and lectured him at length about how great literary talent was being wasted in a department fit only for barbers and perverts. These long speeches were so tiresome that the author began to wish there would always be crowd-shooting, because only that kept the office boy busy elsewhere.

The author’s observation on frustration: whenever a person is frustrated, the anger is usually aimed at one particular person, openly or secretly. For the office boy, that person was Kothamangalam Subbu, whom he blamed for all his troubles, humiliation and neglect.

Kothamangalam Subbu: The Real No. 2

The author points out that Subbu’s start in films was no easier than the office boy’s. In fact, Subbu must have struggled more, since there were no well-established film companies or studios when he began, and he did not have much more education either. His only advantage, the author says ironically, was that he was born a Brahmin, which he calls “a virtue, indeed!”. This gave him exposure to wealthier people and situations. The exclamation shows that the author does not really think birth is a virtue.

Subbu’s many talents

• Loyal helper: He could never work on his own and always had work for somebody else, but he gave all his creativity to The Boss’s projects. His loyalty made him identify completely with his principal.
• Problem-solver on demand: He was a man who could be inspired when commanded. When a producer could not work out how to film a scene in which a rat kills a tigress underwater but then pities and cares for her cubs, Subbu offered four ways to do it. Told that these were not effective enough, he produced fourteen more ideas in a minute.
• Poet: He wrote original “story poems” using folk refrains and folk diction. He could write in more complex forms, but he chose to write for ordinary people.
• Novelist: His long novel Thillana Mohanambal, with dozens of finely drawn characters, recreates the world of the Devadasis of the early 20th century.
• Actor: He never wanted leading roles, yet in every supporting role he played, he did better than the main actors.
• Generous host: His house was always full of dozens of near and distant relatives, and it seemed against his nature even to notice that he was supporting them.

According to his critics, Subbu’s success in films overshadowed and dwarfed his literary work. Though he was charitable and careless with money (improvident), he still had enemies. The author is not sure why: perhaps because he was so close to The Boss, perhaps because he seemed like a flatterer (sycophant), or perhaps because he said nice things about everything. Still, the author says that if anyone gave direction and definition to Gemini Studios in its golden years, it was Subbu.

The Story Department and Its Lawyer

Subbu was always seen with The Boss, but on paper he belonged to the Story Department. This department was a group of writers and poets, and, strangely, it also had a lawyer. Everyone else wore a khadi dhoti with a loose, oversized white khadi shirt. The lawyer alone wore pants and a tie, and sometimes a coat that looked like a coat of mail (armour). He often looked lonely and helpless: a man of cold logic among dreamers, and a neutral man among Gandhi followers in khadi. Officially he was the legal adviser, but people called him the opposite.

The actress and the recorder

Once a talented but short-tempered actress lost her temper on the sets. While she was raging, the lawyer quietly switched on the sound-recording equipment. When she paused for breath, he asked her to wait a minute and played back what she had said. There was nothing really harmful in her words, but hearing her own voice left her speechless with shock (“struck dumb”). She was a girl from the countryside who had been suddenly thrown (“catapulted”) into a position of importance and sophistication without the worldly experience that usually comes first. She never fully recovered from the fear of that day, and her short but brilliant acting career came to an end. The lawyer had caused this without meaning to.

Like others close to The Boss, the lawyer was allowed to make a film of his own. A lot of raw film stock and pancake were used, but nothing much came of the film. Then one day The Boss shut down the Story Department; the text does not say why. The author jokes that this was perhaps the only time in history that a lawyer lost his job because the poets were sent home.

The Poets and Their Idea of Communism

Gemini Studios was a favourite meeting place for poets such as S.D.S. Yogiar, Sangu Subramanyam, Krishna Sastry and Harindranath Chattopadhyaya. Except for the office boys and clerks, everyone seemed to have plenty of free time. The studio had an excellent mess that served good coffee at all hours. In those years of Prohibition under Congress rule, sitting together over coffee was itself a pleasant form of entertainment.

Most of these people wore khadi and worshipped Gandhiji, but they had no real understanding of political ideas. They disliked “Communism” in a vague way, like most people in South India at the time. To them, a Communist was a godless man who had no love for his parents or his wife (no filial or conjugal love), who would not hesitate to kill his own parents or children, and who was always trying to spread unrest and violence among innocent and ignorant people. The author presents this as a loose idea that simply floated about, and he treats it with irony.

The Moral Re-Armament (MRA) Visit, 1952

In 1952, Frank Buchman’s Moral Re-Armament army, about two hundred people, came to Madras. They could not have found a warmer host in India than Gemini Studios. Someone jokingly called them an “international circus”: they were not good on the trapeze, and the only animals they knew were the ones served at dinner, but they staged two plays very professionally, Jotham Valley and The Forgotten Factor. The six-hundred-strong Gemini family, along with other people of Madras, watched these plays again and again.

• The plays carried simple moral lessons (“homilies”), but the sets and costumes were excellent.
• Madras and the Tamil drama world were so impressed that for some years almost every Tamil play had a sunrise and sunset scene in the style of Jotham Valley: a bare stage, a white background curtain and a tune on the flute.
• The studio also enjoyed hosting about two hundred visitors from at least twenty nationalities, a nice change from slapping pancake on crowd players.
• Only some years later did the author learn that MRA was a kind of counter-movement to international Communism, and that big bosses in Madras like Vasan had “played into their hands”. He adds that he is not sure this was true, since the big bosses and their businesses stayed exactly the same, MRA or no MRA.

The Visitor Nobody Understood

A few months later, the big bosses of Madras were again busy on the phone. Gemini Studios cleared a shooting stage to welcome another guest, described only as “a poet from England”. The simple Gemini staff knew of English poets only as Wordsworth and Tennyson; the better-read ones also knew Keats, Shelley and Byron, and vaguely someone called Eliot.

Then a new rumour spread: he was not a poet but an editor, and that was why The Boss was giving him such a big welcome. Vasan was himself the editor of the popular Tamil weekly Ananda Vikatan. Since senior people from The Hindu were involved, the staff guessed he edited some English daily, though not The Manchester Guardian or the London Times.

At the event, The Boss struggled against half a dozen pedestal fans to read a long speech full of general words like “freedom” and “democracy”. It was clear that he too knew very little about his guest. Then the poet spoke, but his accent made him impossible to follow. The author says he could not have spoken to a more dazed and silent audience. The whole programme lasted about an hour, and everyone left completely confused. They wondered what an English poet was doing in a studio making Tamil films for simple people whose lives gave them no chance to develop a taste for English poetry. The poet himself looked baffled, as if he too felt how out of place his talk about the joys and struggles of an English poet was. The visit stayed an unexplained mystery.

Solving the Mystery: Stephen Spender

Here the author reveals his own literary hopes. He believes that writing prose is not the work of a genius; it is for the patient, persistent, hard-working “drudge” who is not discouraged by rejection slips. For such people, he says, The Hindu printed a tiny notice in a corner of an unimportant page about a short story contest run by a British magazine, The Encounter. Nobody among the Gemini literati had heard of it.

Before spending money on postage to England, he went to the British Council Library to look at a copy. When he read the editor’s name, he felt a bell ringing in his heart. It was the same “poet” who had visited Gemini Studios: Stephen Spender. He felt as if he had found a long-lost brother, and he sang while sealing the envelope with his story.

The Last Piece of the Puzzle: The God That Failed

Many years later, when the author was short of money, he found a pile of cheap American paperbacks on the footpath outside the Mount Road Post Office in Madras, selling for fifty paise each. It was a low-priced student edition of The God That Failed, linked to the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The book had six essays by Andre Gide, Richard Wright, Ignazio Silone, Arthur Koestler, Louis Fischer and Stephen Spender, describing how each had been drawn into Communism and had come back from it disillusioned.

Seeing Spender’s name, the author felt a dark chamber of his mind lit up. The reaction to Spender at Gemini Studios was no longer a mystery. The chapter ends with a play on words: The Boss may not have had much to do with Spender’s poetry, but he certainly did with “his god that failed”. One reading: The Boss, who had warmly welcomed the anti-Communist MRA, welcomed Spender because Spender had turned away from Communism, not because of his poems.

What Does the Title Mean?

The author does not explain the title himself, so this is one possible reading. “Pancakes” stands for the practical, glamorous, surface world of film-making: make-up, a strict hierarchy, crowd scenes and screen illusion. “Poets” stands for the literary world that keeps touching it without really belonging to it: the office boy who is “a bit of a poet”, Subbu who truly is a poet, the writers of the Story Department, the visiting poets, and finally a real English poet who leaves everyone puzzled. Much of the humour comes from these two worlds meeting without understanding each other. Subbu is the one person who fits comfortably in both.

Main Characters at a Glance

• Asokamitran (narrator): Clips and files newspaper articles; observant, witty and seriously interested in literature.
• S.S. Vasan (The Boss): Founder of Gemini Studios and editor of Ananda Vikatan; a generous host to MRA and to the English visitor, though he knew very little about the poet.
• Kothamangalam Subbu: The studio’s No. 2; poet, novelist, actor and quick problem-solver; loyal and generous, yet he had enemies for reasons the author cannot pin down.
• The office boy (unnamed): A man in his forties with unfulfilled dreams, a bit of a poet, who blames Subbu for his failure. The author teases him but also shows some sympathy.
• The lawyer (unnamed): The odd one out in the Story Department, logical and neutral; his one clever act accidentally ends an actress’s career.
• Stephen Spender: English poet and editor of The Encounter; baffles the studio and is later found to be a former Communist who had turned away from it.

The Author’s Style and Literary Devices

• Gentle humour: laughing at human weaknesses without being cruel. Example: calling the mixed make-up staff “national integration” before A.I.R. and Doordarshan ran programmes on it.
• Irony: saying one thing but meaning another. Example: Subbu’s advantage of being “born a Brahmin — a virtue, indeed!”.
• Chatty, rambling style: one memory leads to the next, each dwelt upon at length.
• Light satire: poking fun at real institutions and people, such as the poets’ vague politics and the big bosses who “played into” MRA’s hands.
• Understatement: describing serious events lightly, such as saying the lawyer “unwittingly” ended a career, or that “not much came of” his film.

The author’s literary interests (a common exam question): his view that prose-writing belongs to the persevering “drudge”, his effort to enter The Encounter contest, and his emotional joy on recognising Spender’s name all show how seriously he cared about literature, far beyond his ordinary job.

Key Facts

Important Words and Phrases

• Pancake: brand name of the make-up material used at Gemini Studios.
• Gemini family: the author’s name for the studio’s staff.
• Ignominy: public shame or humiliation.
• Improvident: not careful about money or the future.
• Sycophant: a person who flatters others to gain favour.
• Blew over (here): burst out in anger.
• Struck dumb: so shocked that one cannot speak.
• Catapulted into: suddenly thrown into a new position.
• Coat of mail: armour made of linked metal rings.
• Filial / conjugal love: love for parents / love between husband and wife.
• Compunction: a feeling of guilt that stops one from doing wrong.
• Homily: a simple moral lesson or sermon.
• Played into their hands: helped someone’s plan without realising it.
• Favourite haunt: a place one visits often.
• Heard a bell ringing: felt a sudden flash of recognition.
• Drudge: a person who does hard, dull work.

Quick Revision

• The chapter is an excerpt from Asokamitran’s My Years with Boss, about his years at Gemini Studios, Madras (founded 1940 by S.S. Vasan, “The Boss”).
• Pancake was the make-up brand bought in truck-loads; the mixed-region make-up staff is jokingly called “national integration”.
• The office boy, in his forties and “a bit of a poet”, blames Kothamangalam Subbu for his failures.
• Subbu, the No. 2, was a poet, novelist (Thillana Mohanambal), actor, quick problem-solver and generous host.
• The Story Department’s lawyer recorded an actress’s outburst and played it back; the shock ended her career. The Boss later closed the department.
• The khadi-clad poets had only a vague, secondhand fear of Communism.
• In 1952 MRA visited Madras and staged Jotham Valley and The Forgotten Factor; the author later learnt it was a counter-movement to international Communism.
• An English “poet” baffled the studio; the author later found he was Stephen Spender, editor of The Encounter.
• The God That Failed showed that Spender was a disillusioned ex-Communist, which explained The Boss’s warm welcome.
• Style: gentle humour, irony, light satire and a chatty, rambling narration.