Hindi
‘Happy New Year’ collects Rs 95 crore at the opening weekend
MUMBAI: Being a solo release with a festival weekend to back it up, Happy New Year took a bumper opening day as expected. The film was well promoted and a big hype was created around it before its release. Although the film did not enjoy positive public reports, such a big film would hardly be affected on its opening day, especially considering the release period.
However, the film’s collections started dropping from day two. The collections given out to the media are controlled by the producers, Red Chillies, while distributors have been instructed not to reveal figures to media. The figures put together from sources come to around Rs 95 crore. The collections have shown a bigger drop as the new week begins and the long weekend of holidays is over.
Mumbai 125KM collects Rs 1.5 crore in its first week. Sonali Cable fails to cross even the crore mark in its first week collecting just Rs 85 lakh. Ekkees Topon Ki Salaami fared badly in the first week and totally sank in the second week managing to collect just Rs 10 lakh. Its two week total rounds up to Rs 1.65 crore. Tamanchey, another wasted effort, collects Rs 10 lakh in its second week and its two week collections total up to Rs 1.35 crore. Haider adds Rs 3.5 crore for its third week to take its three week tally to Rs 48.95 crore. Bang Bang has collected about Rs 8.05 crore for its third week taking its three week total to Rs 144.65 crore.
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.
