Hindi
Babumoshai Bandookbaaz… Aimless
Babumoshai Bandookbaaz is another film glorifying the local criminal of the Hindi belt. That they don’t work is a fact, though it fails to deter more such makers. What is worse, the makers don’t care about the time period when the film was based. It jumps at will from 1970s when Kishore Kumar songs ruled the roost on the radio to mobile phone era.
The babumoshai, a Bengali term of respect while addressing someone, will always remain a mystery in the title of the film which is based in UP!
The character of Nawazuddin Siddiqui is a sharpshooter, a supari killer, somewhere in UP working for a woman politician, played by Divya Dutta, spewing paan spit and foul words as her trademark. She assigns him to eliminate her detractors as and when required. Nawazuddin kills people at will, roams around freely in town and walks off to his hidden, far away abode. It seems, he makes it a point to kill his targets when witnesses are around.
While Divya assigns killings to Nawazuddin, her two henchmen envy him. So, there are perpetual undercurrents of backstabbing and betrayals.
Made to change sides, now Nawazuddin is engaged by another politician, a rival to Divya. Meanwhile, Nawazuddin has met and fallen in love with the character of Bidita Das, who mends footwear but is never shy of using her instruments of trade on men who act funny. Bidita and Nawazuddin hit it off and a sex affair starts (no, it is not a love affair).
You realize that Nawazuddin is a legend in his field when he comes across his fan claiming to be his disciple, Jatin Goswami, who has turned into a shooter inspired by the stories of Nawazuddin’s exploits. Now, there are multiple angles. You don’t know who are the friends and who are the enemies. Killings take place as a sport. Everybody is betraying the other at whim.
Babumoshai Bandookbaaz is a hackneyed film with no head or tail. It does not even have a single theme. Somebody points a gun, at times pulls a trigger and does not at other times! It tries to vend some ‘steamy’ kissing scenes and sex, as if they were just invented, to poor effect. Also, the film may be about sharpshooters but the bullets they spray rarely ever hit the target!
The film lacks on scripting, has poor direction and is a let down on all counts. Nawazuddin has an ill-defined role and he only seems to be in a hurry to end his newfound success, with this film coming soon after Munna Michael, where he did a role not meant for him. Bidita Das can’t act. Divya Dutta and the rest are ineffective.
Babumoshai Bandookbaaz is a sham of a movie.
Producers: Kiran Shyam Shroff, Ashmith Kunder, Kushan Nandy.
Director: Kushan Nandy.
Cast: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Bidita Das, Divya Dutta, Jatin Goswami, Murli Sharma and Anil George.
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.
