Hindi
Madhuri Dixit gets Planman Media platinum diva award
MUMBAI: The Planman Media‘s Powerbrands Hall of Fame Awards has honoured Bollywood actor Madhuri Dixit with the platinum diva award for excellence in the field of acting.
“It might be my millionth award but it is important to me as it shows that people still think of me,” Dixit said. The actress, who has been in the industry for more than two decades now, said she achieved this position in the industry with a lot of hard work and was happy that people regard her as a good actress.
“Thank you for the honour. I am very proud. This award proves that even today people think of me as someone substantial and with integrity. I have been here due to a lot of hard work and it is wonderful to know that people see me in that light,” she added.
Former Miss Universe and Bollywood actress Sushmita Sen was also honoured with the woman entrepreneur award for running her beauty pageant organisation, I Am She. “This is the first time in 18 years in showbiz that I am getting an award for being an entrepreneur. I am very grateful,” the 36-year-old said.
The Hall of Fame rising star male and female awards were given to actor Prateik Babbar and Parineeti Chopra for Ekk Deewana Tha and Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl respectively.
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.
