Hindi
Satya 2: An insult to the original
MUMBAI: Since long people have been expecting anything worthy from a Ram Gopal Varma film; they come and go. How badly Varma has lagged behind in the art of filmmaking is finally proved by Varma himself with Satya 2. In that, the comparison with his original Satya from 1998 becomes inevitable and besides showing the degeneration of its maker, Satya 2 is also an insult to the earlier one. The cheap intent to use the title tells of a desire to lure the people despite this film having nothing to qualify as a sequel.
Producer: M Sumanth Kumar Reddy.
Director: Ram Gopal Varma.
Cast: Puneet Singh Ratn, Anaika Soti, Sharvanand, Mahesh Thakur, Mrunal Jain.
The story – for whatever it is – is a kind of sci-fi of the crime world. Puneet Singh, the hero of the film, walks into Mumbai with dreams of giving the city’s underworld a new identity. To turn it into an organisation with precision; this organisation is called Company! The qualifications of Puneet are in his get up. He dresses like a middle rung executive and sports specs to complete the effect. His speciality is that he takes the mistakes committed by his peers, the dons of yore, as his lessons to stay ahead of rivals as well as authorities.
Puneet decides to make his presence felt with three murders of city’s top names; an industrialist, a media tycoon and the police commissioner. The crimes take the cops by surprise but they have no clue who perpetuates them. They have no clue of the arrival of a new don.
Puneet may be a calculated don but he surely has a romantic side to him. He has a sweetheart in Anaika Soti and, like any young man who decides to settle down after launching his career; Puneet too decides to marry his girlfriend so that they could sing a song in Kashmir. Sadly, even that does not bring a relief from the tedium that has been set by the proceedings.
Ram Gopal Varma seems to be counting on luck factor now. Just make a film and hope it works! Sadly, with this kind of an all-round mediocrity in his film how can luck smile? He had better diversify from the underworld theme because it has been done to death and the underworld is presently dormant. And, what is not in news generates no interest. He tries props such as photography and background. However, his efforts to experiment with camera are disturbing to ones’ senses and the sudden bursts of background music are jarring. The performance of his actors is mediocre to bad. Puneet makes no impact. Anaika has little to do. The film lacks in interesting characters which could inspire an actor.
Satya 2 has nothing going for it.
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.
