Hindi
Farhan Akhtar turns jingle writer in ‘Shaadi Ke Side/Effects’
MUMBAI: Time and again Farhan Akhtar has caught the fancy of many fans interested in poetry with lyrical lines on the social networking sites. However, in his upcoming film, Shaadi Ke Side/Effects the actor-director-producer plays a struggling musician Sid who takes up the job of a jingle writer-composer to pay his bills.
However, since Farhan loves music and his guitar, the role was special to Farhan and thus he gave a spin to the featured jingles.
Director Saket Chaudhary and the brand team of Skore condoms, an in-film sponsor in Shaadi Ke Side/Effects whose jingle Farhan’s character in the film was supposed to sing in the film, were in for a pleasant surprise when Farhan added his own lines to the jingle. He included the line – ‘I love my mother-in-law!’ referring to Rati Agnihotri who plays Vidya’s mother in the film.
While this part has now been edited out of the film, Producer Rangita Pritish Nandy says: “Watch out for it in the gag-reel at the end of the film!”
She adds: “This was massively funny while we were shooting! The whole unit cracked up and we almost kept it in the film as well but then decided against it. But watch out for it in the gag-reel at the end of the film which also features the reprised version Tauba Mein Pyaar Karke Pachtaya now re-christened Tauba Mein Vyaah Karke Pachtaya!”
Shaadi Ke Side/Effects, produced by Balaji Motion Pictures and Pritish Nandy Communications, releases on February 28, 2014.
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.
