Hindi
Honey Singh back with a big ‘birthday’ bang
MUMBAI: Move over ‘Chaar Botal Vodka’, ‘Sunny Sunny’ and ‘Desi Kalakaar’ tunes as our own rapper Yo Yo Honey Singh is back with a big ‘birthday’ bang. He has given his fans another reason to rejoice and celebrate their birthday in his style.
His song from the upcoming Bollywood film Dilliwaali Zaalim Girlfriend has been titled ‘Birthday Bash’. And apart from singing, he is also featuring in the song.
Commented the movie director, “We met him regarding making a song that was situational of a club birthday track. He loved the idea and since he is the king of club tracks, it was a theme that absolutely required a Honey touch and he thought it would be big for sure. After completing the song he told me, I’ve given you a formula hit.”
His song has struck the perfect chord with the audience and it has got big thumbs up.
‘Birthday Bash’ is sung and composed by Singh. Alfaaz has penned the lyrics and also sung the song along with Singh. Directed by Japinder Kaur, produced by Manjeet Kaur and Tarnpreet Singh, the movie stars Divyendu Sharma, Jackie Shroff, Prachi Mishra, Pradhuman Singh, Ira Dubey and others and is set to release on 20 March, 2015.
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.
