Hindi
Box Office: ‘Neerja’ flies with Rs 21 crore in opening weekend
MUMBAI: Neerja started slow on its opening Friday but the film’s appreciation helped it catch momentum on the very first day during the later shows. Akin to Airlift, despite being a dry film, it managed to invoke patriotic and humane sentiments among viewers.
The film grew as the day progressed and grew by about 80 per cent on day two. And more than double its Friday figures on Sunday. That is a sort of miracle for a heroine oriented film, especially since the heroine in this case, Sonam Kapoor, enjoys limited draw. So, though almost 30 years old incident, people have identified with the story as they did with Airlift. The film has ended its first weekend with a total of Rs 21.2 crore.
Loveshuda is poor, registering a little over Rs 2 crore for the weekend.
The other two films, Instant Ishq and Ishq Forever, are very poor.
Sanam Re has managed to rake in Rs 24.6 crore in its first week, which does not seem enough for the distributor to recover, who needs much more to recoup.
Fitoor collects Rs 17.15 crore for its first week, which is way short of recovery.
Ghayal Once Again is beyond salvaging point. The film adds a meagre Rs 1.85 crore in its second week to take its two week total to Rs 34.95 crore.
Sanam Teri Kasam collects Rs 45 lakh in its second week to take its two week tally to Rs 7.7 crore.
Saala Khadoos collects Rs 30 lakh in its third week taking its three week total to Rs 10.4 crore.
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
