Hindi
Lemon bags silver at Flame Award for Dabur’s Real School of Nepal
New Delhi: Lemon Pvt Ltd (LPL) bagged a silver award in the prestigious Flame Awards Asia 2016 under Integrated Marketing Campaign for Dabur’s “Real School of Nepal”. The awarded campaign is an annual national level school competition, which provides children the platform to showcase their talents.
LPL MD Ujjwal Shakya said that this achievement boosted the morale of his team whose immense efforts have led it to the silver. Being the first award to be received by a Nepali agency in the international arena has challenged his team to perform much better in the days to come. He said the client had been very supportive from the beginning on this project and had motivated Lemon to widen its reach across the country every year.
“This should motivate both advertisers and agencies in Nepal to work harder because this proves that even the work we do for Nepal can make a mark and get international recognition if you are able to showcase outstanding work” said Advertising Association of Nepal (AAN) vice-president Ujaya Shakya.
“Winning the Flame Award in the Integrated Campaign category competing with the region’s best players is actually a great achievement for all of us. It is a kind of an assurance that our team has done a good job and would like to congratulate and thank everyone who has made this Real School of Nepal successful”, Dabur Nepal head of marketing Abhaya PrasadGorkhalee said.
The Rural Marketing Association of India (RMAI) instituted the Flame Awards in 2006 to recognize excellence in marketing, promotion and initiatives across rural markets of India and immediate sub-continent. It is considered the most prestigious award programme that celebrates the best of the best in marketing and communications in presence of the region’s leading marketing and agency professionals.
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.
