Pancake was the brand name of the make-up material that Gemini Studios bought in truck-

loads. Greta Garbo must have used it, Miss Gohar must have used it, Vyjayantimala must also
have used it but Rati Agnihotri may not have even heard of it. The make-up department of the
Gemini Studios was in the upstairs of a building that was believed to have been Robert Clive’s
stables. A dozen other buildings 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 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
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 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 lot of raw stock and pancake were used on it, not much came of the film. Then
one day The Boss closed down theStory 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.Yogiar, Sangu Subramanyam,
Krishna Sastry and Harindranath Chattopadhyaya. 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 outto cause and spread unrest and violence among innocentand
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 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 theunchangeable 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 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 whoselives 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; rejectionslips 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 o England.
In those days, the British Council Library had an entrance with no long winded signboards
and notices to make you feel you were sneaking into a forbidden area. And there were copies
of The Encounter lying about in various degrees of freshness, almost untouched by readers.
When I read the editor’s name, I heard a bell ringing in my shrunken heart. It was the poet who
had visited the Gemini Studios — I felt like I had found a long lost brother and I sang as I
sealed the envelope and wrote out his address. I felt that he too would be singing the same
song at the same time — long lost brothers of Indian films discover each other by singing the
same song in the first reel and in the final reel of the film. Stephen SpenderStephen — that
was his name. And years later, when I was out of Gemini Studios and I had much time but not
much money, anything at a reduced price attracted my attention. On the footpath in front of
the Madras Mount Road Post Office, there was a pile of brand new books for fifty paise each.
Actually they were copies of the same book, an elegant paperback of American origin.
‘Special low-priced student edition, in connection with the 50th Anniversary of the Russian
Revolution’, I paid fifty paise and picked up a copy of the book, The God That Failed. Six
eminent men of letters in six separate essays described ‘their journeys into Communism and
their disillusioned return’; Andre Gide, Richard Wright, Ignazio Silone, Arthur Koestler, Louis
Fischer and Stephen Spender. Stephen Spender! Suddenly the book assumed tremendous
significance. Stephen Spender, the poet who had visited Gemini Studios! In a moment I felt a
dark chamber of mymind lit up by a hazy illumination. The reaction to Stephen Spender at
Gemini Studios was no longer a mystery. The Boss of the Gemini Studios may not have much
to do with Spender’s poetry. But not with his god that failed.