Hindi
‘Maamla Legal Hai’ secure top spot in IMDb Popular Indian Celebrities list
Mumbai: On this week’s IMDb Popular Indian Celebrities list, Naila Grewal, known for her recent portrayal of Ananya Shroff, the Harvard graduate with aspirations in legal aid, in the recently released legal comedy-drama series Maamla Legal Hai, has secured the top spot. Her co-stars Nidhi Bisht, Anant Joshi, Ravi Kishan, and the series director Rahul Pandey have respectively claimed the seventh, 14th, 24th, and 37th positions.
The cast of Laapataa Ladies has also made their mark on the list. The leading duo Nitanshi Goel and Sparsh Srivastav, who play newlyweds Phool and Deepak in the Kiran Rao-directed production, have attained the 8th and 40th ranks. Shah Rukh Khan, Triptii Dimri, Shabana Azmi, Deepika Padukone, Aamir Khan, Alia Bhatt, and Medha Shankr are placed second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, ninth, and tenth, respectively, in this week’s rankings.
The Popular Indian Celebrities feature, available exclusively on the IMDb app for Android and iOS, highlights the top trending Indian entertainers and filmmakers each week. This is based on more than 200 million monthly visits to IMDb worldwide. Entertainment fans can see who is trending every week, follow their favourite entertainers, and discover new breakout talent.
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.
