Hindi
Producers’ guild, filmmakers provide vanity vans for on-duty cops
MUMBAI: Ever since the Covid2019 pandemic stuck us, the film fraternity has been standing at the vanguard of providing the much-needed succour and support to the needy and the affected. The industry has been leading by example by extending whatever help it could in these times of crisis.
Now, police personnel, who have been sweating it out at the frontline of duty during the ongoing lockdown, is benefitting from one such initiative: fully-equipped vanity vans for the use of on-duty police personnel, especially the women members who have to work for longer hours.
This gesture, part of the ‘Mission Suraksha’ initiative, is the end result of the coming together of four stakeholders: Film Makers for Frontline Care, Producers Guild of India, Ketan Rawal, owner of vanity vans, and NGO Project Mumbai.
A total of 16 vanity vans and tents have been deployed at different parts of Mumbai for the use of police personnel.
“It has been financed by Producers Guild of India, and supported by Ketan Rawal who owns a fleet of vanity vans, and NGO Project Mumbai,” said Chhitra Subramaniam of Filmmakers for Frontline Care.
“It was our idea. And we went ahead with it. All the money for the initiative came from the producers’ guild. We are a bunch of 8-10 people. Project Mumbai is the supporting partner in this. And the NGO has been extremely helpful in this mission. These vans are only for the police, especially women personnel who find it hard to use toilets during duty. These are stocked with masks, biscuits, sanitary pads, etc,” said Chhitra Subramaniam.
While doctors and healthcare workers on the frontline of duty have the option of using the facilities at hospitals, police personnel, especially women, struggle when they are on frontline duty, she said.
She is very grateful to all three partners: Producers Guild of India, Ketan Rawal and Project Mumbai for all the support and help.
Project Mumbai has been providing food to almost 70,000 stranded migrant labourers spread all over Mumbai in addition to giving food for around 1,600 doctors.
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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.
