Hindi
Bittoo Boss fails to take command of the box office
MUMBAI: Bittoo Boss gets a poor response at the box office, collecting a meagre Rs 15 million in its opening weekend.
The second Friday release, Chhodo Kal Ki Baatein, fared worse earning a negligible amount.
Housefull 2 did very well in its first week to collect Rs 658 million and continued to swell during its second weekend, adding another Rs 197 million to take its 10-day total to Rs 855 million.
Though the collections are affected to a certain degree due to the IPL, especially at centres where the home team plays, they are compensated on other days. Being the only entertaining fare to watch during the initial stages of the IPL has worked to the film’s advantage.
Agent Vinod‘s collections fizzled out as the film managed to take home a mere Rs 2 million in its third week, netting Rs 435.5 million so far.
Kahaani can be termed a super hit, considering its cost and the fact that the film continues to do well even as the star cast films have faded by week two. The film has gone on the collect Rs 13.5 million in its fifth week, totaling Rs 584.5 million.
Paan Singh Tomar collected Rs 1.5 million in its fifth week, taking its total to Rs 168 million.
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.
