Hindi
CR officials direct RGV to contact Railway Board for permission to shoot at CST
MUMBAI: In his quest to stay afloat given the washout of his latest film Department, Ram Gopal Varma is making a film based on the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai.
Recently, Varma went to the Central Railway (CR) headquarters at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) to seek permission from the public relations department to shoot some scenes at the station.
It is said that the CR authorities denied any permission and asked the filmmaker to approach the Railway Board in Delhi. Reportedly the authorities didn‘t want any gory images or blood to be shown as the incident wasn‘t one to be glorified. “So, we have asked the production to send the proposal in writing and we will be permitting them to shoot the scenes only if we feel that it will not affect the railways‘ image,” said a CR official.
Varma‘s team is also scouting other locations and strategic places like Cama Hospital and the vehicle by which the terrorists had entered and gone on a rampage around the city. They are also trying to rope in the railway announcer who saved many lives on the night of the attacks.
Varma had initially courted controversy when he visited the terror-ravaged hotels (Taj Mahal and the Oberoi) soon after the terror strike along with the then chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and his son Riteish Deshmukh.
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.
