Hindi
Pyramid Saimira promoter Saminathan offloads 6% stake
MUMBAI: Faced with a tight liquidity crunch, Pyramid Saimira Theatre Ltd (PSTL) promoter and CMD PS Saminathan has sold 6.037 per cent stake in the company.
The latest disclosure in the National Stock Exchange on Monday states that Saminathan has sold 1.7 million (1,707,000) shares in an off-market sale between 20 – 31 December last year.
Saminathan now holds 5.08 million (5,086,614) shares, or a 17.99 per cent stake, in the company. Also, another promoter Uma Saminathan sold 152,839 shares or 0.27 per cent equity in the three months to December.
Meanwhile, the company clarified that some financial institutions have sold off pledged shares of the promoters against short-term loans taken by the company to overcome a liquidity crunch it had landed into due to a tax issue and the huge loss suffered in mega budgeted film Kuselan.
The company further said in a filing that it has always “intended to maintain the best of relationships with bankers and did not want any delays or defaults to any bank or institution.”
As per the filing, in December last year, Income Tax department issued a bank attachment order against PSTL on a tax issue. Though the matter got resolved in an amicable manner, the company said it underwent a liquidity tightness on account of the same.
In October last year, Saminathan was set to double his holding by acquiring seven million equity shares, or 24.9 per cent, for a proposed price of Rs 1.4 billion (Rs 200 per share) from NC Ravichandran and Nirmal Kotecha. However, in December, a fake letter from Sebi (Securities and Exchange Board of India) caused severe battering of the stock value and resulted in termination of the deal.
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.
