Hindi
Box Office: ‘Saala Khadoos’ opens weak; ‘Airlift’ collects Rs 82.8 crore in first week
MUMBAI: Saala Khadoos shows once again that sports films don’t usually work with Hindi audience and, if and when they do, they have limited takers. The film had a poor opening considering names like Raju Hirani and R Madhavan are in the credits. It barely collected Rs 1.2 crore on Friday, after which, not managing to improve much on Saturday and Sunday, it collected Rs 5.3 crore for its opening weekend. It’s the very predictable script that took the film down.
On the other hand, Mastizaade fails to sell is senseless, humorless skin show and forced comedy. The film is so void of humor, it depends only on Sunny Leone to salvage it; sadly, that does not happen. The fact is, now box office is mostly about multiplex audience and this film is what would have been called C grade mass film during pre-multiplex days. The film has managed to put together 11.15 crore for its opening weekend and is not expected to sustain through the week.
Airlift has proved to be the only film so far in the year of 2016 to win appreciation as well as box office numbers. The film opened slowly on Friday last but then took wings. It improved on the following Saturday and took a quantum jump on Sunday thereby recording a weekend of Rs 44.24 crore as against the opening day of little over Rs 10 crore which is remarkable.
This is rare that the film, which has almost met its weekend figures over next four days to close its first week with an impressive Rs 82.8 crore.
Kyaa Kool Hain Hum 3, a supposed sex comedy, is poor. The film, after an opening weekend of Rs 17.2 crore, manages to add just another Rs 9.1 crore to take its first week total to Rs 26.3 crore.
Wazir survives through its third week but merely. The film collect 1.1 crore and takes its three week tally to 37.95 crore.
Bajirao Mastani comes to the end of its run with collections of RS 1.05 crore in its sixth week. The film collections tot up to Rs 171.45 crore for six weeks.
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.
