| Hanging on to that point, I told the acting students that if Prof. Taneja is not offended, then why they are making such a hue and cry and concluded my speech. There was utter chaos and some one shouted that Prof. Gopal of Cinematography Department laughed at he cartoon. Then Prof.Gopal got up and said it was true that he had laughed. It was just a funny cartoon and so he had laughed and there was nothing wrong in it! Still they were not pacified and raised hell (in which department they excelled!) Finally after much shouting by the Acting Students and some counter shouting by others, the Principal gave a big sermon on peaceful coexistence and ended the meeting with the Shanti Mantra - Om Shanti Shanti. Since no was action was taken on the erring acting students, it encouraged them more and that night the atrocities were repeated more forcefully by beating up some of the students. The offending poster was torn up into pieces. This time the Student Union demanded stern action against those culprits. After due enquiry, the Principal Shri. Jagat Murari rusticated two students Deepak Dhar and Raza Murad and suspended Lakhan Pal and Susheel Bhatnagar . Immediately the Acting students went on strike protesting the action in front of the Principal's office. After a few hours the Principal withdrew the action taken against the acting students and their strike was withdrawn. This sudden and partisan decision by the Principal without punishing the culprits culminated into a longer strike which escalated to change the history of Film Institute for ever. The strike went on for months. The students came out fro the hostel rooms and stayed in the open, putting up their beddings on either side of the road near the Main gate of the Institute. For the junior students classes were conducted by the seniors. All negotiations were recorded on tape and photographs taken and press releases were sent on a regular basis. I even went to the office of a Marathi tabloid and redrew the cartoon for publication. I used to paint the walls with slogans and cartoons � materials courtesy of the Art Department! One day there was a small crowd of Acting students making a big noise under the Wisdom Tree. They were holding large card board effigies of � Vinay Shukla, Surendar Chawdhary, K.G.George, Baba Majgavkar and of course me. They were beating the cut outs with chappals and brooms and were condemning us to be hanged by neck till death. Thus five of were hanged on the Wisdom Tree. ( Though Vinay Shukla, Surendar Chawdhary, K.G.George and Baba Majgavkar were in no way associated with the Cartoon incident, it was assumed by the acting students that they must be the brains behind it ). All their attacks were targeted at the five of us, and we were thus given the rare honour of being hanged on the Wisdom Tree! Well, that was the story of our hangings. The strike went on for months and ultimately brought a lot of changes to the curriculum of the various courses at the Institute! THE END |
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