Hindi
Docu on coin collectors released
Mumbai: Did you know that a section of homeless people eke out their daily living from the modest coins dropped as offerings into the Yamuna river?
A 22 minute-long documentary titled In Search of Destiny (Coin Divers) by Aakash Arun, that attempts to throw light into the lives of coin divers numbering around 400 and 500 and living near the much-polluted but equally revered Yamuna, has been in circulation.
The film begins with a train chugging on a bridge and people ‘offering‘ coins to the Yamuna and subsequently praying for their wishes.
It is followed by a shot, where a child is seen hurling a dumbbell-shaped greasy object into the river and tugging the rope. The camera zooms into the dumbbell-shaped object and you see one shining coin stuck to it. Later on, the scene focuses on two men who narrate how they receive sustenance from the Yamuna in the form of coins.
"The men are part of the marginalised section which is not only homeless and helpless but also are susceptible to the ills of addiction, says Arun.
Nearly 60 per cent of these coin drivers in the national capital are in the grip of some form of addiction. These people are not too difficult to find out. Most of them are present in a radius of 4-6 km of the bridge over Yamuna that can be reached from Kashmere Gate, according to the film‘s narration.
"Coin divers on an average find coins worth Rs 100 daily," says Arun adding that earning goes up on few occasions when luck smiles upon them in the form of trinkets, heavy metallic objects that fetch decent prices.
The documentary was shot entirely using a DSLR camera which, he said, could be brought out in the open only after he could gain confidence of the coin divers.
The fact that Yamuna plays a pivotal role in these people‘s lives can be easily grasped by viewers.
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.
