Day 373 - 11th January 2012

Woke up at 11 today. Since it is Jayati's birthday, there was barbeque party at Chinar last night, with some awesome kebabs being made! Had breakfast in Chota. Spent a major part of the day taking care of some MCSA work. Had meetings with the director and some faculty members. Had IC class in the evening. The session dealt with the origins of Indian Cinema. Got to know that the conept of summer internships actually originated in the film industry. Also got to know many interesting facts about how cinema halls started in Bombay and the kind of marketing schemes used in those days to entice people to watch movies. Dadasaheb Phalke and India's first motion picture Raja Harishchandra werw discussed in detail. The amount of time he spent researching and learning how to use the camera coupled with the struggle that he had to go through to complete the film was truly astounding. For the female lead role, even prostitutes refused to act, so eventually he had to cast a man in the role who had to dress up as a woman! As is the case in many movies, here  is wife had to keep her jewelery as security for him to get money to make the movie. The final movie was a blockbuster with bullock carts being used to carry the coins received through ticket collection.

In the evening had made plans to work on the rural report but then a plan was made to have dinner at Ikobo. Around 15 of us went to have sizzlers in the freezing weather :P Was good fun though. Got back to campus by midnight. Surfed the net for a bit before calling it a day. Guess, the rural report will have to start tomorrow!