Raj Kapoor had booked the Udagamandalam railway station in Ooty, part of the Nilgiri Mountain Railway, a
World Heritage Site, for his fourhour cult classic Mera Naam Joker. They were shooting the scene where the schoolboys chug back to their boarding school after a vacation.
Sixteen-year-old Raju, the chubby class clown, played by
Rishi Kapoor, is waiting to receive his favourite teacher,
Mary (Simi Garewal), with a bouquet of flowers, and admits it’s been lonely without her. To the filmmaker’s dismay, the station was crowded with agitating students who, while admitting that they personally liked
Hindi movies, were part of the Tamil Nadu Students’ Anti-Hindi Imposition Agitation Council. The Council was demanding the scrapping of the three-language formula and an end to teaching Hindi in the state. It also wanted to abolish the use of Hindi commands in the National Cadet Corps (NCC) and have Hindi films and songs banned, along with the closure of the Dakshina Bharat Hi