Hindi
Puja Gupta to feature opposite Abhay Deol in ‘SNAFU’
MUMBAI: After a mega search for the leading lady opposite Abhay Deol in SNAFU, the makers have zeroed in on Puja Gupta. More than 50 fresh faces were auditioned over 20 days, pushing the shoot by a month. Every last member in the unit used their contacts and connections to contribute to the hunt. The director, Sethu Sriram really liked Puja for the role but had two more names in mind. He discussed the situation with Abhay and in a joint call Puja Gupta got the highest votes.
Puja essays the role of Aaniya who shares center stage with Abhay, closing business deals for him. She is an ambitious corporate highflyer who hails from a small town and moved to the city of dreams to pursue her career. After winning the Miss India crown in 2007, Puja made her debut in Bollywood with F.A.L. T.U helmed by Remo D’Souza and most recently she was seen in the zom com Go Goa Gone.
Director, Sethu Sriram said, “It’s a relief that the hunt is over. This role is very critical to the storyline and the girl had to be much more than singing, dancing and looking good. After a lot of deliberations we have decided upon Puja. Aaniya is an ambitious small town girl so we needed the vulnerability of a small towner along with high glam quotient who would be a head turner. I have auditioned a lot of promising fresh faces and a few upcoming names, some of them were brilliant but Puja fits the bill naturally. With all humility, I want to thank Abhay who helped me in streamlining the process.”
The shoot begins on 12 July and with no time left the crew is moving at a rocket speed, especially to put Puja’s fashion forward costumes together.
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.
