At the Film Institute of India ( before Television courses were started), from 1970 onwards we had a �Thought for Today� Notice Board near the canteen where the students was free to put up any interesting matter for the benefit of the student community. It was also a forum for the free expression of student opinion. In 1971, I was in my Final Year Motion Picture Photography Course. By that time Navin Nischal, Shatrughan Sinha, and Jaya Bhaduri had started making their debut in the closely guarded Bombay Film Industry and were emerging as the future stars. This made the Acting students at the Institute to behave with their heads in the clouds as if they have already become Superstars. It was seen in their arrogance and attitude towards their fellow students. This caused a lot friction and loss of good will between the Direction and Acting students in particular. As a result of that many of the Direction students started excluding Acting students from their Final year Diploma films by casting outside artistes in their place. When the Institute authorities insisted that the casting should be done only from among the Acting students, the Direction students cleverly overcame that by selecting the subjects in such a manner, so that a child or a very old woman / man or a tight rope walking street acrobat etc has become the main character. Such roles certainly cannot be played by the acting students and they lost out their chances in the Diploma films. As a result four of the acting students - Raza Murad, Deepak Dhar, Sushil Bhatnagar and Imtiaz Ahmed Khan Pathan did not get to act in any of the Diploma films! Hence four additional Diploma films exclusively for them were sanctioned to accommodate them. But instead of entrusting the Direction department teaching staff to direct those films, all the four films were assigned to the Professor of Acting - Prof. Raushan Taneja.
This odd decision by the Principal Shri. Jagat Murari infuriated most of the students including me, for, some months earlier Prof. Taneja was assigned to do an one hour feature film with disastrous results. The film was planned as part of the programme to showcase the Acting talents of the Film Institute students for the sake of the Bombay film industry. It was an one hour featurette to be shot during the Christmas vacations. The story, screenplay was also handled by the Acting Professor. A lot of precious raw stock was wasted during a ten day shooting schedule in Madh island and there were reports of some of the acting girls missing from location who were later traced to the flats of their seniors cum successful stars in the Bombay film world. At that time I had put up a poster depicting Prof. Taneja shooting in Madh Island and a ship unloading film rolls into the sea. It created some commotion among the acting students but they didn�t know that I was the person behind it.
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