Hindi
Coming Soon: ‘Finding Fanny ‘- the novel
MUMBAI: With the release date nearing, for the most anticipated movie, Finding Fanny, the director Homi Adajania revealed that the movie will also be released in the form of a 200-plus page novel next year.
Homi while speaking about the same said in a statement, “My co-writer, Kersi Khambatta, wrote the novel based on my short story of Finding Fanny, and then we used that to develop the screenplay. My only issue was that I told him to keep the book on ice until the film was out.”
He further added that although he prefers books over films, he wanted people to watch Finding Fanny on the silver screen first. “Now that it is releasing soon, Kersi can sell the novel to publishers. It’s a funny read, and way more convoluted than the script.”
The duo reportedly has an offer by a leading publisher. The co-writer of the film Kersi Khambhatta while talking about his experience on writing the screenplay for the film said, “His process (of adapting a screenplay from a book) gave us a lot of colour, description and detail to play with. It eventually lent itself to a fatter and fuller screenplay as well. Our main motive was to make the movie first. Now that it is done, publishers have expressed an interest in reading the original manuscript of the novel.”
Finding Fanny is all set to hit the theatres on 12 September 2014 starring Deepika Padukone, Arjun Kapoor, Dimple Kapadia, Naseerudin Shah and Pankaj Kapur. The movie is about five quirky characters in the sleepy village of Pocolim. They go out on a trip to find the long last girlfriend, Fanny Fernandez, of one of the characters.
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.
