Hindi
Nanavati murder case on celluloid after 48 years
MUMBAI: After a span of 48 years, a film based on the Nanavati murder case is being planned.
In the real-life story of crime and passion, Cdr. Kawas Manekshaw Nanavati, on his return from an assignment one day in 1959, was outraged to find that the British-born wife he adored had allowed herself to be seduced by his friend of 15 years, Prem Ahuja.
After being talked out of committing suicide by his repentant wife, a mother of three, he went to the naval base, picked up a revolver and headed for his friend‘s house. There he confronted him and asked if he intended to marry his wife and accept their children.
Philanderer Ahuja is reported to have retorted that he could not marry every woman he slept with. This resulted in a scuffle between the two men in which Ahuja got killed.
Despite a disclaimer at the outset, the black and white film Yeh Rastey Hain Pyar Ke produced by Sunil Dutt and directed by R.K. Nayyar was a re-play of the Nanavati case. Only, the end was altered to show that the ‘guilt-ridden‘ wife (Leela Naidu) feels ‘defiled‘ for having slept with another man and dies in her husband‘s (Sunil Dutt) arms in the courtroom after he is pronounced ‘not guilty‘. The film was released in 1963.
The new film to be produced by Pooja Bhatt‘s Fisheye Network and Dino Morea‘s Clockwork Films, is to be directed by Soni Razdan. She had earlier directed Nazar that starred Pakistani actress Meera, Ashmit Patel and Koel Purie.
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.
