Hindi
Jaya Bachchan to be presented with Deenanath Mangeshkar Award
MUMBAi: Lata Mangeshkar will present the Deenanath Mangeshkar Award (Vishesh Puraskar) to veteran Bollywood actress and Rajya Sabha member Jaya Bachchan on 24 April. The 65-year old actress will be presented with the award for her dedicated services to Indian theatre and cinema on the death anniversary of Pandit Deenanath Mangeshkar.
Incidentally, Bachchan played a rising playback singer in the Hrishikesh Mukherjee helmed film Abhimaan where she played a character that was said to be modeled on the then leading songstress Lata Mangeshkar.
"I remember she (Jaya) would come for my song recordings before she began shooting for Abhimaan. During my recordings she used to stare at me and I kept wondering as to why she was doing this. When I saw the film, I noticed that she had copied my gestures, like the way I used to stand, adjust my pallu among a few other things," the singer averred.
The Master Deenanath Award, instituted in the name of Mangeshkar‘s father, recognizes service in the field of music and films.
Suresh Wadkar and Vandana Gupte will be awarded for their contribution to Marathi theatre and cinema.
Veteran musicians, artists, actors, dramatists and social workers will also be honoured by awards that will consist of a memento and cash prize of Rs 101,001.
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.
