Hindi
Asha Bhosle turns 81!
MUMBAI: Born on 8 September 1933, the evergreen Asha Bhosle is all set to embrace the 81st year of her life.
The younger sister of legendary singer Lata Mangeshkar, has sung for Bollywood actresses like Madhubala, Helen and Asha Parekh as well as the new-age heroines like Kareena Kapoor.
Celebrating her birthday and thanking her fans for supporting her in her journey, she tweeted, “Thank you for kind greetings. Without your support I wouldn’t have achieved my goals. Walk a bit longer with me & we’ll find the perfect note.”
The Padma Vibhushan awardee is said to have crooned more than 12,000 songs in multiple languages. Apart from Hindi, she has also sung in over 20 Indian and foreign languages.
In a career spanning over half a century filled with music and milestones, one of India’s most loved singers has faced a number of ups and downs in her professional as well as personal life.
Asha Bhosle started her career as a playback singer with ‘Chala chala nav bala’ in the Marathi film Majha Bal (1943) at the age of 10 to support her family. But she first tasted success with BR Chopra’s Naya Daur (1957), in which she sang ‘Saathi haath badhana ‘and ‘Uden jab jab zulfein teri’.
Some of her memorable numbers are, ‘Aaiye meherban’, ‘Jaaiye aap kahan’, ‘Raat akeli hai’, ‘Piya tu ab toh aaja’, ‘Dum maaro dum’, ‘Dil cheez kya hai’, ‘Yayi re yayi re’ and ‘Arre re arre’ among others.
In September 2009, The World Records Academy, an international organisation which certifies world records, recognised her as the ‘Most Recorded Artist’ in the world.
In 2011 she was officially acknowledged by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most recorded artist in music history. The Government of India honoured her with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2000 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2008.
In 2013, she made her debut as an actress at the age of 79, in the film Mai, and received critical acclaim for her performance.
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.
