Hindi
A series of 7 debacles at the box office
MUMBAI: The flood of seven releases this week – Arjun, Yeh Khula Aasmaan, MLA, Rakhtbeej, Chutki Bajake, Love Recipe, Love Wrinkle Free – met with disastrous results at the box office.
Department has proved to be a debacle. After the film‘s opening weekend collection of Rs 81 million (not Rs 71 million as reported last week), the film ended the first week with Rs 111 million.
Ishaqzaade has continued to sustain well in its second week, adding Rs 125 million to take its tally to Rs 382.5 million. The third weekend collections stood at Rs 43 million, closing its 18-day net collection of Rs 425.5 million.
Dangerous Ishhq 3-D collected just Rs 4 million in its second week. The film has netted Rs 63 million.
Jannat 2 added Rs 24 million in its third week, taking its total to Rs 448 million.
Vicky Donour remained strong even in its fifth week to collect Rs 28 million, making its kitty swell to Rs 383 million.
Housefull2 has collected Rs 6 million in its seventh week. With this, the film totals Rs 1.17 billion.
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.
