Hindi
Dev Anand turns 88, announces sequel of Hare Rama Hare Krishna
MUMBAI: India’s evergreen star Dev Anand turned 88 and used the opportunity to announce the sequel of Hare Rama Hare Krishna, which he had made 39 years ago.
The film brings back Anand playing the character that he played in the original. Naturally, the character would have aged by less than a decade in the sequel, as the story moves forward.
Said Anand, “The script of Hare Rama Hare Krishna Aaj which takes forward the story of the earlier film is ready. It isn’t a remake of Hare Rama Hare Krishna. Every scene and every character except mine would be new. If I have played Prashant in the original, the sequel will have me play Prashant in 2012 in this film too.”
The hunt is now on for “A woman of today, trendy savvy with-it and attractive.”
He confided that he starts thinking of his next film even before he completes the previous one. “While I am making a film, I am totally consumed by it. But I must admit that a part of my mind moves to the next project.”
Chargesheet is a totally new genre for the filmmaker. “I haven‘t done this genre before, it‘s a murder mystery.” Off late the producer-director-actor has been busy with the release of his film Chargesheet that releases this Friday.
“I have been having meetings with Warner Brothers, my producers,” he said.
Anand is both agile and charged about whatever he does. “If I‘m not as enthusiastic about my new film, then I‘ve no business in making it. My audience, my fans are my source of energy. I need my fans‘ good wishes that gives me energy,” Anand concludes.
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.
