Hindi
Poor films help ‘Neerja’ fly at box office with Rs 34.2 crore
MUMBAI: This has proved to be a disastrous week. A numerous non-descript films released, which found some sort of play time at multiplexes but did not manage to find an audience.
The much hyped Aligarh from Hansal Mehta comes a cropper. A real life incident of an Aligarh Muslim University professor caught in a sting with his pants down with another male, offered nothing new to the viewers to attract them to the cinema halls. Film experience is certainly not about showing skeletons in the cupboard of a man. The film had very poor response on day one, day two as well as day three to show collections of Rs 1.2 crore for its opening weekend.
The other noticeable release of the week, Tere Bin Laden: Dead Or Alive, emerged as a poor attempt at 1960s American humour. The film lacked on all counts including, mainly, on gags. Direction was poor. What is it with Laden character spewing native Punjabi twang and English dialogue having English sub-titles? The film has managed to collect Rs 1.95 crore for its first weekend.
Other releases like Bollywood Diaries, Love Shagun, Rhythm, Jab Tum Kaho and Dhara 302, passed as unnoticed as they came.
Loveshudha, a second attempt to launch Girish Taurani, fails miserably. The film opens with no audience, no show and somehow manages to end its first week with a figure of Rs 2.2 crore.
Weak oppositions helped much appreciated Neerja hold well as it ended its first week with a total of Rs 34.2 crore. The film’s good run continued as the new releases also happened to be poor and Neerja enjoyed a healthy second weekend.
Sanam Re adds Rs 1.5 crore in its second week to take its two week total to Rs 28.1 crore.
Fitoor adds Rs 75 lakh in its second week thus taking its two week tally to Rs 17.9 crore.
Ghayal Once Again collects Rs 75 lakh in its third week taking its three week total to Rs 35.7 crore.
Airlift adds Rs 1.1 crore in its fifth week to take its five week total to Rs 125.7 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.
