The world of popular Indian cinema, and its icons like Geeta Bali, had a powerful hold on the students. It was the only cinema they had watched back home, and in most instances, it was the reason they had made the journey to Poona.

The preceding years may have seen a profusion of mediocre (or worse) films in India, just as the Film Enquiry Committee had said, but even in their midst a few filmmakers like Raj Kapoor, Bimal Roy, Mehboob Khan and Guru Dutt, among others, had been making some outstanding movies. Their output was so remarkable that the decade was later dubbed the ‘Golden Fifties’.

A newly independent nation, with its innumerable hopes and just as many problems, seemed to have stirred these filmmakers into new directions. If there was romance and soft-focus beauty, there was a

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