Previous Year: Long Questions with Answers - Poets and Pancakes

Long Answer Questions (2025)

Q1: How do the peddler from "The Rattrap" and 'the office boy' from "Poets and Pancakes" compare in terms of their frustration, status, and grudges against others.

Q2: How do the characters of Umberto Eco from "The Interview" and Subbu from "Poets and Pancakes" compare in terms of their resourcefulness?

Previous Year Long Answer Questions 

Q.1. What do you understand about the author's literary inclinations from the account?
Ans. The author's work in the Gemini Studios was to cut out newspaper clippings on a wide variety of subjects. Naturally his work honed his literary taste. He was well informed. He must have fairly good knowledge of English literature. He has named quite a few English poets in this account. He must have been sending his prose pieces to different papers and periodicals. He surely sent his entry to a short story contest organised by The Encounter. Even after his retirement, he did not give up reading. He saw a pile of low-priced edition of 'The God That failed' and bought a copy. This shows that he had a taste for serious reading.

Q.2. The author has used gentle humour to point out human foibles. Pick out instances of these to show how this serves to make the piece interesting.
Ans. There are a number of instances of gentle humour in this piece. Especially the description of the make-up department that consumed truckloads of pancakes (they did not eat them, of course) is very interesting. The make-up room with mirrors and lights looked like a hair cutting salon. The make-up department was a symbol of national integration because there was a gang of people from different parts of India. This gang of nationally integrated make-up men could turn any decent looking person into a hideous crimson hued monster. There was a strict hierarchy in the make-up department in the task of making actors ugly. There was an office boy (though he was not a boy but a grown up man of forty). He had joined the Studios years ago in the hope of becoming a star actor, or a top screen writer, director or lyrics writer. He came to the author to enlighten him how great literary talent was being wasted. But the author prayed for crowd, shooting all the time to get rid of a genius of a bore.