Hindi
Film audience rues being taken for granted: stars & others’ poor show this week
*What Shah Rukh Khan and director Imtiaz Ali have done with Jab Harry Met Sejal can be called a patch-up job. The distributors may lose money but what Shah Rukh Khan has lost in this one weekend is his 25 years of stardom and goodwill.
The Pandora’s Box opened with a poor response. The film turned out to be the most negatively rated film ever; the audience anger was palpable — for being taken for granted. To add to their fury were the escalated admission rates at the cinema halls, especially at the multiplexes.
The film collected approximately Rs 145 million on day one, dropped a little on Saturday followed by and managed similar collections even on Sunday to end its first week. The film was expected to get some sustenance on Raksha Bandhan holiday in many parts of India.
*Gurgaon, a film about a local land-grabbing mafia of Gurgaon city, found no takers. Local issues don’t draw viewers.
*Mubarakan failed to encash on its potential. Despite being a family entertainer, it suffered due to poor opening and, then, also failed to pick during its first week. However, due to negative reports of Jab Harry Met Sejal, the film got a better second weekend. It collected Rs 349 million for its opening week and added Rs 60 million in the second weekend.
*Indu Sarkar, the film on the Emergency, collected Rs 45 million in its first week. Very poor.
*Raag Desh, the film about three INA soldiers facing the wrath of the British army, remained very poor. It collected about Rs 7.5 million in its first week.
*Munna Michael added Rs 11.5 million in its second week taking its two-week tally to Rs 319.5 million.
*Lipstick Under My Burkha collected Rs 64 million in week two to take its two-week total to Rs 169 million.
*Jagga Jasoos collected about Rs 8 million in its third week to take its three week tally to Rs 512 million.
*Mom collected Rs 7.5 million, taking its three-week total to Rs 326 million.
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.
