Hindi
Deepika Padukone in a new avtar in ‘Lovely’
MUMBAI: While already in news for the ‘cleavage row’ and her acting in Finding Fanny, Deepika Padukone continues to stay in focus for a different reason this time.
After the sneak peak of the Deepika Padukone’s item song ‘Lovely’ was released on Happy New Year’s music launch, the official video of the hot and spicy number is finally out.
Composed by Dr. Zeus, ‘Lovely’ has been penned by Jiwan Mann, Kumaar and crooned by Kanika Kapoor, Ravindra Upadhyay, Miraya Varma and Fateh.
‘Lovely’ features the actress in an avatar that is poles-apart from what she is portrayed in other HNY songs like ‘Manwa Lage’ and ‘Indiawaale’. The song, being touted as the ‘item song of the year’, will be Padukone’s entry song in the film.
Starring Shah Rukh Khan, Abhishek Bachchan, Boman Irani, Sonu Sood and Vivaan Shah, HNY is dance heist film and follows the story of six oddballs set to loot a ‘handful of diamonds’. Slated for a 24 October release, it is director Farah Khan’s third film with SRK after Main Hoon Na and Om Shanti Om.
The Happy New Year team, along with singers Yo Yo Honey Singh, and Kanika Kapoor are currently busy with their world tour.
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.
