Hindi
Morphed Kareena on the cover of VHP magazine
MUMBAI: Vishva Hindu Parishad’s (VHP) latest campaign to reconvert Hindu women who married Muslim men has stirred a controversy after its magazine, Himalay Dhwani, morphed a picture of actor Kareena Kapoor Khan on its cover. The cover, which has gone viral on the internet, has Kareena’s face half covered with a veil and a caption that reads: “conversion of nationality through religious conversion.”
VHP’s campaign is designed to set a warning against ‘love jihad’, an activity under which Muslim men reportedly target young girls belonging to non-Muslim communities for conversion to Islam by feigning love.
Post her marriage to Saif Ali Khan, Kareena did not convert to Islam, but has just added ‘Khan’ to her last name. According to Rajini Thukral of Durga Vahini, the young women’s wing of the VHP, that was the reason for using her face. Thukral said, “She is a celebrity. The youth try to emulate celebrities. They think if she can do so, why not us?”
Claiming that love jihad was a serious issue, Thukral further elaborated, “If a girl gets caught in love jihad and becomes Muslim by mistake and now wants to return to her original faith, isn’t it her right?”
BJP UP vice president, Prakash Sharma claimed that Kareena can sue if she has objections to the photo that has been used.
However, a rather bewildered husband Saif Ali Khan has angrily disapproved of the whole plot saying, “It’s ridiculous and not surprising but these uneducated and bigoted ideas are the worst of India and condemning them is important.”
Strangely enough, Kareena’s upcoming film with Salman Khan, Bajrani Bhaijaan, is rumoured to revolve around the theme of love jihad. The film also stars Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Anil Kapoor.
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.
