Hindi
Indian filmmaker Susi Ganesh honoured by Maryland Governor
NEW DELHI: Susi Ganesh, the director of Shortcut Romeo, has received a special honour from Maryland Governor Martin O‘Malley for his contribution to Indian cinema.
Ganesh and his team were in New York to promote Shortcut Romeo after screening the movie and walking the red carpet at Cannes Film Festival along with actress Ameesha Patel and Puja Gupta.
Ganeshan has directed some award winning movies in Tamil such as Virumbukiren, Five Star, Thiruttu Payale and Kanthaswamy.
Recalling his 15 years of service and hard work to promote Indian movies especially Tamil and now Hindi, the Governor said, "The State of Maryland is proud to bestow the honour for his contribution to the entertainment industry."
The award and the replica of great seal of the state of Maryland was presented by Dr. Rajan Natarajan, deputy secretary in the state of Maryland and one of the high-ranking Indian-American political appointees.
Shortcut Romeo is a remake of Ganesh‘s super hit Tamil film ‘Thiruttu Payale‘, produced by Manjari Susi Ganesh. It also features Neil Nitin Mukesh, and will be released on 21 June.
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.
