Hindi
Jay Leno Receives Mark Twain Prize for Humor
MUMBAI: Jay Leno has been awarded the nation’s top humor prize, ‘Mark Twain Prize for American Humor’. The comedian was feted in a ceremony which took place on 19 October at the Kennedy Center in Washington.
Jimmy Fallon, Jerry Seinfeld and Wanda Sykes celebrated with the former ‘Tonight Show’ host as he received the honour. The show will be broadcast nationally on 23 November on PBS.
According to media reports, accepting the awards, Leno said that The Tonight Show years were the best of his life and also praised his successor Jimmy Fallon for bringing a new dynamic to the show, adding that it’s fun to see the show change.
The Mark Twain Award honours people who have had an effect on American society in the tradition of Samuel Clemens, the writer, satirist and social commentator, better know as Mark Twain. Past recipients of the award include Ellen DeGeneres, Carol Burnett, Will Ferrell and Bill Cosby.
Leno built his career in standup comedy and still makes more than 100 live performances each year. During his time on The Tonight Show, he remained the top-rated late-night host for years, before stepping down from the show for the second time this year. He stepped down for the first time in 2009 and finally in February this year.
Leno is currently developing a new TV show from his Los Angeles garage about on cars. Named Jay Leno’s Garage, the show will premiere on CNBC in 2015. He will also continue his live performances and start a new comedy series next year at the Kennedy Center.
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.
