Hindi
No big BO collection this week
MUMBAI: The week saw as many as four films releasing. Even though Hasee Toh Phasee was the only film with known faces and a prestigious banner to back it, it did not meet up to the expectations and the promotion it was given. The film had nothing to offer to the single screen audience and even the youth and the multiplex audience did not readily take to the film. It opened to a tepid response. While Friday was below average, there was a nominal rise in the Saturday collections and it rose on Sunday mainly at multiplexes, to take its weekend collection figure to 15.75 crore.
Baloo Happy Hai, Ya Rab and Heartless could not draw enough audience.
Last week’s One By Two opened to poor response and remained so as the week progressed ending its first week run with mere a 2.5 crore to show.
Jai Ho that was given an entertainment tax exemption in some states had little effect on the collections as the exemption came after the bad word of mouth had already done the damage. The film added 19.2 crore in its second week, taking its two week total to 101.2 crore.
Yaariyan managed to add another 60 lakh in its fourth week to take its four week tally to 32.65 crore.
Dedh Ishqiya collected 55 lakh in its fourth week thereby taking its four week total to 25.95 crore.
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.
