Hindi
Benegal, Karnad, Bhandarkar to receive presidential honour
MUMBAI: Three personalities from theatre and the film industry like Shyam Benegal, Girish Karnad and Madhur Bhandarkar will be conferred the Ganga Sharan Singh Award by President Dr Pratibha Patil at the Rashtrapati Bhavan this Wednesday for their contribution to Hindi language.
This isn‘t the first time Bhandarkar, Benegal and Karnad are being felicitated. Earlier, Benegal was felicited with the Padma Shri award in 1976 and Padma Bhushan award in 1991. Karnad too was conferred the Padma Shri award in 1974 and the Padma Bhushan award in 1992.
For Bhandarkar, this would be the fourth time that he would receive a Presidential award. In 2001 and 2005, he was conferred the National Film Award for best film for Chandni Bar and Page 3, respectively, by the then President APJ Kalam. In 2007, he was conferred the National Film Award for best director for Traffic Signal.
The Ganga Sharan Singh award is a literary honour that the Kendriya Hindi Sansthan (Central Hindi Organisation), Ministry of Human Resource Development annually confers on writers of outstanding works in Hindi literature. The award is also bestowed upon those who play an important role in promoting the Hindi language through their area of expertise.
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.
