Hindi
Dinesh Thakur passes away
Mumbai: Veteran theatre actor-director Dinesh Thakur, known for his character roles in Hindi films, has passed away after a prolonged illness. The actor-director was suffering from kidney ailments. His end came at a suburban Andheri hospital.
Thakur acted in several acclaimed films like Mere Apne, Rajanigandha and Ghar. He appeared as one of the leads in the Basu Chatterjee directed film by Rajnigandha, which won both the Filmfare Best Movie Award and the Filmfare Critics Award for Best Film.
Thakur, who mostly appeared in character roles in Hindi films, was also a screenwriter and story writer. He is known for writing the story and screenplay of the 1978-made film Ghar that won him the 1979 Filmfare‘s best story award.
Thakur headed a theatre group called ANK Productions for the last three decades. His oldest and still popular theatre production has been Jis Lahore Nahi Dekhya.
He was a noted Indian theatre director, actor in theatre, television and Hindi films.
He was 65 and is survived by actor-wife Prita Mathur.
Thakur‘s last rites will be conducted on Thursday at the Oshiwara crematorium around 4.30 pm.
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.
