Hindi
Don 2 helps 2011 end on a positive note
MUMBAI: The last week of 2011 has ended on a positive note with moviegoers flocking to watch Bollywood Badshah Shah Rukh Khan who had a less successful year than Salman Khan.
The SRK starrer Don 2, a sequel of the earlier hit, benefitted with Christmas holidays to brave unfavourable reports. The movie, which collected Rs 753 million in its first week, added another Rs 192 million in its unopposed second weekend to take its 10-day tally to Rs 945 million.
The collections include Tamil and Telugu dubbed versions.
Kya Yahi Sach Hai, the solo release of the week, went haplessly unnoticed.
Pappu Can’t Dance Saala collected about Rs 1 million in its second week; its two-week total stayed a paltry Rs 4.1 million.
Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl added Rs 9 million in its third week, taking its net collections at the box office to Rs 333.5 million.
The Dirty Picture rocked steady, collecting Rs 15 million in its fourth week; its net collection stood at Rs 809.5 million.
Desi Boyz, the Hindi comedy drama, has netted Rs 414 million afer its five-week run, while Rockstar took its total collections to Rs 603 million in seven weeks.
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.
