Hindi
Director of Bombay to Goa S Ramanathan dies
MUMBAI: Acclaimed director S Ramanathan, who brought Amitabh Bachchan into the limelight with his film Bombay to Goa, passed away in Chennai on Wednesday. It is said Ramanathan was listening to music when he just collapsed and passed away. It was a case of cardiac failure.
Ramanathan shared a special bond with Amitabh Bachchan. He made three films with him namely Giraftaar, Ganga Jamuna Saraswati and Mahaan. Bachchan was also starring in his last vehicle Zamaanat that was in the making for more than a decade. He was planning to release the film this year.
The other actor with whom the reputed Kannada director was associated with was Mehmood with whom he made Sabse Bada Rupaiya, Do Phool, Bombay To Goa and Faisla.
Ramanathan started his career with theatre in Bangalore and spent most of his early days in the city. He later shifted to Madras, now known as Chennai, mainly because in the late 1950s and early 1960s the city was known for its film activities.
Initially, he worked as an assistant to the then well-known director A Bhim Singh and later turned director with the Malayalam film Naadodikal and followed it up with films like Shreekovil and Devaalayam.
After the success of Bhim Singh‘s Tamil film Madras To Pondicherry, Ramanathan decided to remake it in Hindi and moved to Mumbai. He titled the film Bombay to Goa for which he roped in then struggling actor Amitabh Bachchan in the lead role. The film became a hit and marked his long relationship with the superstar.
Ramanathan had also the honour of working with legendary artistes like Raj Kumar, Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan, Vishnuvardhan and Shivaraj Kumar in multiple languages.
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.
