Hindi
John Abraham gets lean look for his home production Madras Cafe
NEW DELHI: Known for his well-proportioned figure, Bollywood’s quintessential poster boy John Abraham was forced to sport a leaner frame to get into the skin of his character of a special agent against gangsters in Viacom Motion Pictures, JA Entertainment, and Rising Sun Film’s political thriller, Madras Cafe.
The director Shoojit Sircar wanted the actor to sport a body which was more real and naturally lean as opposed to a bulked-up body, and so John adopted a special diet and fitness routine to look the part.
Says Sircar, “Yes, audiences will see a leaner John Abraham since I did not want him to particularly stand out in a crowd and he needed to look like one of them; hats off to his dedication, since he worked really hard on his physique for the film.”
Talking about the warm equation he shares with his film’s lead, the director added, “John and I are good friends…We have similar vision when it comes to films and are planning a few more together – We do not interfere in each other’s space and enjoy working together”.
Says producer and actor John Abraham, “Madras Café has been my dream project and we have been in discussions for years over the subject – We have worked extremely hard on the film and are satisfied with the outcome – What I can assure you is audiences will be talking about the film even after they’ve stepped out of the theater… it is a high-on-content, thought provoking film”.
The film is scheduled to release 23 August and also stars Nargis Fakhri, Prosenjt Chatterjee, and Rashi Khanna. The film is political spy thriller set against backdrop of the Sri Lankan Civil War of the 1990s.
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.
