Hindi
Airtel signs content deal with Kannada film Accident
BANGALORE: Airtel has announced a unique association with the yet-to-be released Kannada movie Accident.
According to this deal, Airtel will be providing exclusive content from the film to its customers in Karnataka in the form of ringtones, hello tunes, wallpapers, etc.
Since the story of the conventional masala flick revolves around a hero who has lost his wife in an accident, the Bangalore city traffic police (BCTP) has requested its actor-director Ramesh Arvind to be the city traffic police brand ambassador.
The BCTP will soon be launching a traffic awareness campaign for which some ad agencies have already pitched. In an effort to create awareness and help promote safe driving, the BCTP spends around Rs 10 million of its own funds, plus attracts a lot of sponsors.
The promotion partners are Zee Kannada and Radio Mirchi. While Zee Kannada will be promoting the film on television, Radio Mirchi will be doing it on FM radio.
The audio album of the movie Accident will be released soon by Anand Audio, before the April 2008 release of the film.
Airtel has around 6.5 million subscribers in Karnataka as per the last reported figures, and Bharati Airtel Karnataka mobile services CEO V Venkatesh claims that the number is now around 7 million, the largest by a single service provider in any state in India.
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.
