Hindi
Bollywood tours in Mumbai in November this year, courtesy MTDC
MUMBAI: Giving an opportunity to Bollywood enthusiasts to witness film shoots, the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) has decided to organise Bollywood tours in Mumbai in November this year.
MTDC will partner with Goregaon Film City in North Mumbai for a unique concept of Bollywood Tourism. The tours will last an hour each and will be conducted only on Saturdays and Sundays, it is understood.
The corporation is also in talks with film and television producers to get a celebrity to be a part of the tour that would give tourists the opportunity to interact with the celebrity or have the celebrity himself/herself conduct the tour.
“There is huge attraction for Bollywood and there is huge scope for tourism. At Goregaon Film City, shootings are simultaneously on at several sets, and people can watch and interact with Bollywood stars there,” observed J K Banthia, chief secretary, Maharashtra. He added that the schedule of the tours and the shootings at Film City would be displayed on the MTDC website for people to book in advance.
It is said that the first tour is expected to take off in the first weekend of November this year. The pick-up points will be MTDC ‘s office at Prabhadevi, from where a bus will take people to Film City.
The Corporation is also in talks with Brihanmumbai Electric Supply & Transport (BEST) Undertaking to decide the fixed tour cost.
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.
