Hindi
Look who is Alia Bhatt’s latest fan, Aston Kutcher
MUMBAI: Hollywood star Aston Kutcher is full of praise for the 2 States’ actress Alia Bhatt’s ‘Going Home’ video which carries a moving message and bats for safety of women.
“Wow. Just wow,” the 2 and a half men actor, posted on his Facebook page along with the link of the short film.
Alia had made headlines for featuring in the video where she is seen taking help from a group of strangers in a vehicle after her car breaks down in the middle of a deserted road late at night.
The men ogle at Alia with a lustful look and are eager enough to sexually assault her. Oblivious of the men’s intentions, Alia talks to them and thanks them for dropping her home. The video has been directed by the Queen famed Vikas Bahl.
Overwhelmed by his gesture, Alia and took to twitter to share a snapshot of the Kutcher’s Facebook page
“Unable to form a sentence due to immense joy.. woohoo,” the 21-year-old actress tweeted.
The video garnered appreciation in abundance and inspired men to make the world hospitable for women.
Released on October 17, the video has garnered over 2.5 million views on YouTube. It has also ignited several discussions around the subject of women’s safety, on social and mainline media.
On YouTube, the video comes with a brief post-script that reads: ‘I pledge to create a short film titled ‘Going Home’, in which we visualise a utopia for women, where, unlike today, mistrust and fear don’t dictate actions and decisions,” says director Vikas Bahl.’
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.
