Hindi
Delhi book fair marks centenary of Indian cinema
NEW DELHI: Discussions on subjects like “Converting Books to Films” and book releases by a large number of personalities from the film world marked the 20th Delhi Book Fair which had the centenary of Indian cinema as its theme.
Three books were released in Braille on cinema for the visually challenged. The Fair also saw the launch of the popular comic ‘Champak‘ as an audio-CD by Vishv Books.
The Fair, spread over four different halls, had one theme pavilion with over 300 publications on Indian cinema, and saw the presence of several film personalities for various events and book releases, including actor Farooq Sheikh, lyricist Javed Akhtar, Deepti Naval, and Nandita Das.
The theme pavilion was also notable for screening some black and white films of masters like Satyajit Ray and others, apart from displaying the gramophone player and records, film reels and spools and how they gave way to newer technologies.
The fair had a theme-based exhibition – Point of View: One Hundred Years of Indian Cinema – to celebrate the relationship between literature and cinema. Dual special volumes on art of behaving and a change of Urdu on Hindi cinema – “Johare Adakari” and “Urdu and Bollywood” – were released on 29 February.
A book by wellknown critic-turned filmmaker Khalid Mohammed, ‘Two mothers and other stories’ published by Om Books was released by actor Anil Kapoor to coincide with the Fair.
Held every two years in Pragati Maidan, the fair focused on the role and contribution of the cinematic medium towards popular culture on the centenary year celebrations of the Cinema.
“The world book fair featured several film celebrities and authors. The aim was to highlight and portray the works on Indian Cinema,” said National Book Trust Director M A Sikandar.
Earlier at the beginning of this year, the NBT came out with a calendar showcasing the cinema based on literature. The main idea behind such an initiative is to portray the mutual relationship between books and cinema.
Though cinema came to India in July 1896, the first indigenous feature film – ‘Raja Harishchandra’ by D G Phalke after whom the Dadasaheb Phalke awards are named – was made in 1913. It was decided to mark the centenary this year as the next fair would be in 2014.
A total of 27 countries and several international organisations took part and some ministerial delegations of foreign countries also visited the fair, including those of France and UAE.
The event saw around 1,300 publishers with 2,500 book stalls. A rare exhibition of books authored by Rabindranath Tagore marked the 150th centenary of his birth, and the Delhi pavilion marked 100 years of the capital.
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.
