Hindi
Celina Jaitly’s musical video for LGBT gets one million views
NEW DELHI: A Bollywood-style music video featuring United Nations Equality Champion Celina Jaitly which promotes equal rights for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community received more than a million views online.
The two-and-a-half minute video, titled ‘welcome’ has become one of UN’s most watched videos. Jaitly was named UN Equality Champion by Human Rights Chief Navi Pillay last year for her support for LGBT rights.
The video tells the story of a young man who brings his boyfriend home to meet his family for the first time. Charles Radcliff of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) tweeted that the video had become one of the “UN’s most watched ever”.
Jaitly, who made her music debut in the video, also took to Twitter to express her gratitude for the response. “As my song/video for @UN @free_equal #thewelcome crosses one million views on @YouTube I feel so blessed in the holy month of Ramadan! Thank you all,” she said.
The 32-year-old also expressed the hope that the video would spread the broader message of the need to change not just laws but also attitudes and to challenge stereotypes about the LGBT community in light of the threats and discrimination the community faced in India and across the world, the Press Trust of India reported.
Jaitly, a mother of two-year old twins, has said that she has received threats for supporting gays and lesbians but will continue to work towards achieving equality for the community.
Born to a Punjabi father and an Afghan mother, Jaitly was crowned Femina Miss India Universe in 2001. Her breakthrough film role was in the 2003 thriller Janasheen. She rose to fame in the late 2000s following roles in the films Silsiilay (2005), No Entry (2005), Tom, Dick, and Harry (2006) and Golmaal Returns (2008).
She is married to Austrian businessman Peter Haag and the couple has two-year-old twin boys Winston and Viraaj. Jaitly divides her time Mumbai, Dubai and Singapore.
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.
