Hindi
cdubs for Bheeshma Pitamah
MUMBAI: Jayantilal Gada‘s PEN India has taken the services of Amitabh Bachchan to lend his voice and face of Bheeshma Pitamah in its animation film Mahabharat. This is for the first time that the characters of the epic will resemble the stars who dub for them respectively.
PEN claims that the budget of the movie is Rs 500 million.
Talking about Bachchan lending his voice to his dream project, producer Gada said, “Amitabh Bachchan has lent his voice to the role of Bheeshma Pitamah in our animated film Mahabharat. He finished the entire recording in just one hour. He has such a command over the language that he even corrected minor grammatical mistakes in the dialogues.”
Besides, the film has been dubbed by 15 other actors involved with the project. Each character has been made to look like the actor dubbing for it.
Though it has been revealed that Sunny Deol has recorded for the role of Bheem, the other names involved with the project have been kept under wraps.
It is interesting to note that Bachchan‘s Jodi Tor Dak Sune Keo Naa Ashe is the centre of attraction of PEN India and Viacom 18 Motion Pictures‘ joint venture Kahaani.
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.
