Hindi
Aalaap is an aimless effort
MUMBAI: Aalaap, the title would suggest this to be a musical film; it is not a musical in that sense of the word for there is not a single tune you would hum on your way back. It is about a group of likeminded young boys who share their love for music and try to spread happiness and message of patriotism and such to the masses of Naxal violence infested Jharkhand. The inspiration is claimed to be from Rang De Basanti and 1942: A Love Story but the plot of the film resembles more to Jis Desh Mei Ganga Bheti Hai.
Amit Purohit is an ideal student who also excels in extracurricular activities one of which is music. He has a gifted voice. He wins a competition and becomes a local star, an exemplary youth so much so that he is all over local TV and soon noticed by the district administrator who grants him all the funds he may need, a car and a mentor, Vijay Raaz, to spread the message of good will! He finds three more young men, Pitobash, Aabid Shamim and Harsh Rajput and together they form a band.
The band‘s fame spreads; it has reached the boss of the Naxal movement, Murali Sharma, too. They are invited to perform for Sharma and his people in a jungle hideout. All this while the police, lead by Abhimanyu Singh, has decided to go all out to get the Naxals. People are shot dead on both sides and the boys manage to escape barring Purohit. Others decide to hijack a police van and come back for him and are shot by Naxals taking them to be the police because of the police vehicle.
Aalaap not only fails to entertain but will also fail in taking its message through about the Naxal problem; the effort looks aimless.
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.
