Hindi
Fictionalised rendering of Kasab drama online
MUMBAI: It’s been over three years since the 26/11 attacks in which all the nine terrorists except Mohammed Ajmal Kasab were gunned down. While the inhabitants of Mumbai have almost forgotten and gone back to their routines, the Indian judiciary and government are still pondering what to do with the sole surviving terrorist.
Produced by Sohrab Irani, director and film educationist Oovazi Irani has made a ten minute-long film The K File, based on a fictional rendering of one of India‘s biggest contemporary problems.
The film’s protagonist goes by the name of Asab. This is because “the lawyer asked us to call him Asab as the text is separate from the film itself. There might still be some contempt involved,” explained writer Farrukh Dhondy.
The ten-minute short begins with a home minister (played by Gujarati theater actor and model Tushar Ishwar) wanting to hang terrorist Asab (played by Sanjay Nath, who has acted in films like Paathshala and Chance Pe Dance among others) for the terror attacks in the city.
But the minister has to deal with a political dilemma. He knows that his decision to hang the terrorist would invite a lot of controversy and affect his Muslim vote bank. Thus for months, he grapples with himself for a solution and eventually finds a way to deal with Asab’s case.
The film braves to find a solution to a real life situation by merging fact with fiction and the director is successful to an extent. At the end, the film echoes thoughts of all those awaiting the rightful punishment for Kasab for his horrific act.
The film has been recently released online.
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.
