Complete solutions to every exercise in the NCERT Flamingo textbook, Chapter 6 “Poets and Pancakes” by Asokamitran: the “Notice these words and expressions” box, the in-text “Think as you read” questions, Understanding the Text, Talking about the Text, Noticing Transitions, Writing and Things to Do. Try answering each one yourself first, then check.
1 Notice These Words and Expressions
Before the chapter begins, the book prints a box: “Notice these words and expressions in the text.
Infer their meaning from the context.” Here is what each one means where it appears in the chapter.
| # | Expression | Meaning in the context of the chapter |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | blew over | Here, lost her temper and burst into an angry outburst. The temperamental actress “once blew over on the sets” and shouted at the producer. |
| 2 | catapulted into | Suddenly thrown into. The young actress from the countryside had been suddenly lifted into a position of importance and sophistication without the worldly experience that usually comes before it. |
| 3 | played into their hands | Did exactly what someone else wanted, helping their plan. The author says the big bosses of Madras, by welcoming the MRA, “simply played into their hands”, that is, helped the counter-movement to international Communism; he adds, “I am not sure however, that this was indeed the case.” |
| 4 | heard a bell ringing | Suddenly recognised something. Reading the editor’s name in The Encounter, the author realised it was the poet who had visited Gemini Studios. |
| 5 | was struck dumb | Was so shocked that she could not speak. The actress, hearing her own outburst played back, was struck dumb. |
| 6 | a coat of mail | Armour made of linked metal rings worn by soldiers. The lawyer sometimes wore “a coat that looked like a coat of mail”, which made him look out of place among the khadi-clad poets. |
| 7 | the favourite haunt | The place someone likes to visit most often. Gemini Studios, with its good coffee, was the favourite haunt of poets like S.D.S. Yogiar, Sangu Subramanyam, Krishna Sastry and Harindranath Chattopadhyaya. |
2 Think as You Read (In-Text Questions)
NCERT prints four short “Think as you read” boxes in the margin of the chapter itself, before the end-of-chapter exercises. They are answered here in the book’s order.
Think as You Read, Set 1 (the make-up department)
Q. What does the writer mean by ‘the fiery misery’ of those subjected to make-up?
Answer: The make-up room looked like a hair-cutting salon, with lights at all angles around half a dozen large mirrors, and all of them were incandescent lights, which give off great heat. Anyone sitting there to be made up had to bear this burning heat, so the author humorously calls their suffering a “fiery misery.”
Q. What is the example of national integration that the author refers to?
Answer: The make-up department itself. It was first headed by a Bengali, then by a Maharashtrian who was assisted by a Dharwar Kannadiga, an Andhra, a Madras Indian Christian, an Anglo-Burmese and the usual local Tamils. People from so many regions worked together, which the author says shows “a great deal of national integration long before A.I.R. and Doordarshan began broadcasting programmes on national integration.”
Q. What work did the ‘office boy’ do in the Gemini Studios? Why did he join the studios? Why was he disappointed?
Answer: He was in charge of making up the crowd players. On days of crowd-shooting he mixed his paint in a giant vessel and slapped it on their faces. He had joined the studios years earlier hoping to become a star actor or a top screen writer, director or lyrics writer, and he was a bit of a poet. He was disappointed because none of this came true: in his early forties he was still only an ‘office boy’ in the make-up department, and he felt his great literary talent was being wasted in a department “fit only for barbers and perverts.”
Q. Why did the author appear to be doing nothing at the studios?
Answer: His job was to cut out newspaper clippings on many subjects and store them in files. So people saw him sitting at his desk in his cubicle “tearing up newspapers day in and day out,” and most of them, perhaps even The Boss, thought he was doing next to nothing.
Think as You Read, Set 2 (Subbu and the Story Department)
Q. Why was the office boy frustrated? Who did he show his anger on?
Answer: He had come to the studios hoping to become a star actor, screen writer, director or lyricist, but years later he was still only an office boy slapping paint on crowd players, and his talent went unnoticed. He directed his anger at Kothamangalam Subbu, the No. 2 at Gemini Studios, being convinced that all his “woes, ignominy and neglect” were due to Subbu. (He also inflicted long lectures on the author about how his literary talent was being wasted.)
Q. Who was Subbu’s principal?
Answer: The Boss of Gemini Studios, S.S. Vasan, its founder. Subbu was always with The Boss and identified himself completely with him, turning his entire creativity to his principal’s advantage.
Q. Subbu is described as a many-sided genius. List four of his special abilities.
Answer: (1) He could be inspired when commanded: told about a rat that kills a tigress and tends her cubs, he came out with four ways to film it, and then fourteen more alternatives in a minute. (2) He was a poet who composed truly original ‘story poems’ in folk refrain and diction, deliberately addressed to the masses. (3) He was a novelist who wrote the sprawling novel Thillana Mohanambal, with dozens of very deftly etched characters. (4) He was an amazing actor who, in whatever subsidiary role he played, performed better than the supposed main players. He was also a generous man whose house was a permanent residence for dozens of relations and acquaintances.
Q. Why was the legal adviser referred to as the opposite by others?
Answer: He was officially known as the legal adviser, but everybody referred to him as “the opposite”. When a talented but temperamental actress blew over on the sets, he quietly switched on the recording equipment and, when she paused for breath, played the recording back to her. Hearing her own voice, she was struck dumb and “never quite recovered from the terror she felt that day”, and her brief and brilliant acting career came to an end. His action of playing back the recording had “unwittingly” brought harm instead of help.
Q. What made the lawyer stand out from the others at Gemini Studios?
Answer: His dress and his nature. Every other member of the Story Department wore a kind of uniform, a khadi dhoti with a slightly oversized, clumsily tailored white khadi shirt, but the lawyer wore pants and a tie and sometimes a coat that looked like a coat of mail. He was “a man of cold logic in a crowd of dreamers” and “a neutral man in an assembly of Gandhiites and khadiites,” so he often looked alone and helpless.
Think as You Read, Set 3 (the MRA and the English visitor)
Q. Did the people at Gemini Studios have any particular political affiliations?
Answer: No. Most of them wore khadi and worshipped Gandhiji, but beyond that they had “not the faintest appreciation for political thought of any kind.” They were, however, all averse to the term ‘Communism’, and shared the vague notions of the time that a Communist was “a godless man” who “had no filial or conjugal love” (no love for parents or spouse), had no compunction about killing his own parents or children, and spread unrest and violence.
Q. Why was the Moral Rearmament Army welcomed at the Studios?
Answer: The book does not give one stated reason. The people of Gemini Studios were averse to Communism, and the MRA, as the author learnt some years later, was “a kind of counter-movement to international Communism.” The big bosses of Madras like Mr. Vasan gave the two-hundred-strong group a very warm welcome; the author says they “simply played into their hands,” but adds, “I am not sure however, that this was indeed the case.” The staff also enjoyed hosting two hundred people “of at least twenty nationalities”, a change from their usual routine.
Q. Name one example to show that Gemini studios was influenced by the plays staged by MRA.
Answer: The MRA’s plays ‘Jotham Valley’ and ‘The Forgotten Factor’ were seen over and over again by the Gemini family of six hundred. Madras and the Tamil drama community were so impressed that 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.
Q. Who was The Boss of Gemini Studios?
Answer: S.S. Vasan, the founder of Gemini Studios. He was also the editor of the popular Tamil weekly Ananda Vikatan.
Q. What caused the lack of communication between the Englishman and the people at Gemini Studios?
Answer: The Englishman’s accent defeated any attempt to understand what he was saying, and his subject, the thrills and travails of an English poet, meant nothing to the staff of a studio that made Tamil films for the simplest sort of people, “whose lives least afforded them the possibility of cultivating a taste for English poetry.” As the author puts it, “He couldn’t have addressed a more dazed and silent audience”: no one knew what he was talking about.
Q. Why is the Englishman’s visit referred to as unexplained mystery?
Answer: No one at Gemini Studios knew who he was or why an English poet should visit a film studio making Tamil films for simple people. Even The Boss knew precious little about him, his long speech being in the most general terms, and no one understood the poet’s talk. Everyone dispersed in utter bafflement, and the poet himself looked baffled. So the purpose of the visit remained an unexplained mystery.
Think as You Read, Set 4 (Stephen Spender)
Q. Who was the English visitor to the studios?
Answer: Stephen Spender, the English poet, who was the editor of the British periodical The Encounter.
Q. How did the author discover who the English visitor to the studios was?
Answer: The Hindu carried a tiny announcement of a short story contest organised by a British periodical, The Encounter. Before spending money on postage, the author went to the British Council Library to look at a copy. When he read the editor’s name, he “heard a bell ringing” in his shrunken heart: it was the poet who had visited Gemini Studios, Stephen Spender.
Q. What does The God that Failed refer to?
Answer: The God That Failed is a book in which six eminent men of letters, Andre Gide, Richard Wright, Ignazio Silone, Arthur Koestler, Louis Fischer and Stephen Spender, describe in six separate essays “their journeys into Communism and their disillusioned return.” The ‘god’ that failed them is Communism. Finding Spender’s name in it made the reaction to Spender at Gemini Studios “no longer a mystery” for the author, who adds the wry line that The Boss “may not have much to do with Spender’s poetry. But not with his god that failed.”
3 Understanding the Text
Q. The author has used gentle humour to point out human foibles. Pick out instances of this to show how this serves to make the piece interesting.
Answer: The chapter is full of small, affectionate jabs at ordinary human weakness rather than harsh mockery. One clear example is calling the make-up department’s mixed-region staff “national integration” “long before A.I.R. and Doordarshan began broadcasting programmes on national integration”: it takes something quite ordinary and gives it a sly, larger meaning. Another is the remark that Subbu’s advantage over the office boy was “being born a Brahmin — a virtue, indeed!”, where the exclamation suggests the author does not count birth as a real virtue. A third is the office boy’s long lectures, which left the author “praying for crowd-shooting all the time”. Yet another is the joke that the Story Department’s closure was “perhaps the only instance in all human history where a lawyer lost his job because the poets were asked to go home,” which turns an ordinary administrative decision into an absurd, memorable image. Together, these small ironies keep what could have been a dry, factual memoir consistently entertaining.
Q. Why was Kothamangalam Subbu considered No. 2 in Gemini Studios?
Answer: The book simply says, “Subbu was the No. 2 at Gemini Studios”; he was always seen with The Boss, though the attendance rolls placed him under the Story Department. He “could be inspired when commanded” and produce ideas on demand, as the rat-and-tigress anecdote shows, supplying four ways to film it, then fourteen more alternatives in a minute when told they were not effective enough. He was a poet who deliberately wrote for ordinary audiences, a novelist whose Thillana Mohanambal had dozens of deftly etched characters, and an actor who outperformed the lead players in every minor role he took. “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. The author sums him up: “if ever there was a man who gave direction and definition to Gemini Studios during its golden years, it was Subbu.”
Q. How does the author describe the incongruity of an English poet addressing the audience at Gemini Studios?
Answer: The scene itself makes the mismatch obvious: The Boss battles half a dozen pedestal fans on the shooting stage to read a long speech full of vague words like “freedom” and “democracy,” clearly knowing little about his own guest. Then the poet spoke to an audience the author calls “dazed and silent”, since his accent defeated any attempt to understand him; the whole event, the Boss’s speech and the poet’s talk together, lasted about an hour. Everyone disperses in “utter bafflement,” wondering what an English poet is doing in a studio making Tamil films for people “whose lives least afforded them the possibility of cultivating a taste for English poetry”, and even the poet himself looks baffled, “for he too must have felt the sheer incongruity of his talk”. The visit is finally summed up as an “unexplained mystery.”
Q. What do you understand about the author’s literary inclinations from the account?
Answer: Asokamitran clearly takes literature far more seriously than his modest day job would suggest. He holds a strong private conviction that prose-writing is not the true pursuit of a genius but belongs to “the patient, persistent, persevering drudge” whom rejection slips cannot discourage, and he says it was “for such people” that The Hindu printed a tiny short-story-contest announcement “in an insignificant corner of an unimportant page”, which he followed up. His emotional reaction on recognising Stephen Spender’s name, describing it as hearing “a bell ringing” in his heart and feeling like he had found “a long lost brother,” shows a real, personal investment in the literary world well beyond his official job of filing newspaper clippings.
4 Talking about the Text
Q. Discuss: Film-production today has come a long way from the early days of the Gemini Studios.
Answer: This is a discussion-based question with no single correct answer. A strong response contrasts the chapter’s picture of 1940s-50s film-making, mostly indoor shooting, a rigid make-up hierarchy, a Story Department of writers and poets solving scenes by hand, with modern digital cameras, computer-generated effects, professional scriptwriting teams and location shooting across the world, while noting that some things (the need for good storytelling, teamwork, and the studio’s own instincts for stardom) still carry through today.
Q. Discuss: Poetry and films.
Answer: This is a discussion-based question. A strong response draws on the chapter’s own examples: Subbu is a working poet who also thrives inside the commercial film business, several named poets (Yogiar, Subramanyam, Krishna Sastry, Chattopadhyaya) treat the studio as their “favourite haunt,” and Stephen Spender’s baffling visit shows poetry and film-making as two worlds that can share a physical space, a studio’s shooting stage, without truly understanding each other.
Q. Discuss: Humour and criticism.
Answer: This is a discussion-based question. One reading: Asokamitran uses gentle humour, the “national integration” line, Subbu’s ironic “virtue” of birth, the lawyer losing his job “because the poets were asked to go home”, to make quiet criticisms: of casual prejudice, of unfair advantage, and of an unreflective, uncritical mood among Gemini’s own khadi-clad poets. The humour does not soften the criticism; it makes it land more easily on the reader.
5 Noticing Transitions
Q. This piece is an example of a chatty, rambling style. One thought leads to another which is then dwelt upon at length.
Answer: This is exactly how the chapter is built. The make-up department’s description leads naturally into the office boy who works within it, whose frustration leads into a full portrait of Kothamangalam Subbu, whose department (the Story Department) leads into the lawyer and the actress he accidentally ruins, which leads into the khadi-clad poets of Gemini Studios and their politics, which leads into the Moral Re-Armament visit, and finally into the mysterious English visitor and his eventual identification as Stephen Spender. Each anecdote grows out of a small detail in the one before it rather than following any planned outline.
Q. Read the text again and mark the transitions from one idea to another. The first one is indicated below. Make-up department → Office-boy → Subbu
Answer: Continuing the chain given in the book: Make-up department → Office-boy → Subbu → the Story Department → the lawyer and the actress → the poets of Gemini Studios and their vague aversion to Communism → the Moral Re-Armament visit (1952) → the unnamed English “poet” visitor → the author’s discovery, some time later, of the visitor’s real identity as Stephen Spender → the final realisation, through The God That Failed, that the reaction to Spender at Gemini Studios was “no longer a mystery”.
6 Writing
Q. You must have met some interesting characters in your neighbourhood or among your relatives. Write a humourous piece about their idiosyncrasies. Try to adopt the author’s rambling style, if you can.
Answer: This is a personal writing task with no single correct answer. A strong response picks one or two real or imagined characters, describes a specific idiosyncrasy with a light, affectionate tone rather than harsh mockery (matching Asokamitran’s own gentle humour), and lets one small observation lead naturally into the next, exactly the “chatty, rambling” structure the chapter itself demonstrates, rather than following a strict, planned paragraph order.
7 Things to Do
Q. Collect about twenty cartoons from newspapers and magazines in any language to discuss how important people or events have been satirised. Comment on the interplay of the words and the pictures used.
Answer: This is an extension activity with no single correct answer. A strong response collects a genuine variety of political and social cartoons, identifies the specific person or event each one satirises, and comments concretely on how the caption or dialogue works together with the drawing, exaggerated features, an ironic caption, a visual pun, to make its point, connecting the activity back to the chapter’s own use of gentle humour and irony to comment on real people and institutions.