Hindi
Film industry wants Bharat Ratna for Dilip Kumar
MUMBAI: The entire film industry from Rajnikant to Kamal Hassan to our artistes like Aamir Khan, Kamal Haasan, Yash Chopra, Mamooty, Rakesh Roshan, Subhash Ghai, Chiranjeevi, Ramesh Sippy, and Mukesh Bhatt have endorsed a petition appealing that Bharat Ratna be conferred on actor Dilip Kumar. The initiative has been started by Mahesh Bhatt.
Bhatt said in a statement, "Dilip Kumar, the icon is as old as the Indian film industry. He is the symbol of secular India and has an unmatched career record spanning from pre-independence years till the last decade."
With a plan to involve millions of Dilip Kumar fans in the initiative, a Facebook community Dilip Kumar for Bharat Ratna has been launched. The community has till date as many as 1000 members till date with its ranks swelling by the day.
The Facebook community supporting the petition includes names like Rajeev Khandelwal, Priyanka Chopra, Kajol, Randeep Hooda, Salma Agha, Runa Laila, Mukul Dev and Khalid Mohammad.
Reads the web page of the community, "The people of India would like to send their fervent request to the Government of India to confer the prestigious Bharat Ratna, India‘s highest civilian honour, to the best actor in the country, Shri Dilip Kumar."
Dilip Kumar, popularly known as ‘Tragedy King of Bollywood‘, started his acting career with Jwar Bhata in 1944 and then went on to act in classics like Andaz (1949) Deedar (1951), Aan (1952), Devdas (1955), Mughal-E-Azam (1960), Ganga Jamuna (1961) and RamAur Shyam among many others.
In 1994, the Government of India awarded the senior actor with Dadasaheb Phalke Award. Not, only in India, Dilip Kumar is highly regarded in Pakistan too. In the year 1998, Nishan-e-Pakistan, the highest civilian award of Pakistan was conferred upon the thespian.
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.
