Hindi
Relief for Ghosh as Metro officials clear scene of Kahaani
MUMBAI: The makers of the Vidya Balan-starrer Kahaani have heaved a sigh of relief with the Kolkata Metro Railway authorities clearing the scene where the actress is shown being pushed before a speeding metro train.
“They have promised us that there is nothing in the film that will tarnish the image of the metro railway or prompt people to commit suicide on the tracks. We are happy with their explanation and have removed objections,” Kolkata Metro‘s general manager P B Murti said.
Glad to have been able to convince the railway officials, director Sujoy Ghosh said, “I have spent my childhood in Kolkata and will never do anything that will harm the city. The film is meant to increase the curiosity about the wonderful city that Kolkata is.”
The trailer of Kahaani shows a pregnant Vidya waiting on the platform to board a metro train at the Kalighat station. As soon as the train arrives, she is pushed onto the tracks by a man standing behind her.
Worried that the scene would remind people of the frequent acts of suicides on the tracks that has been tarnishing the image of India‘s first tube railway, the Metro officials had written to Ghosh asking him to remove the scene from the trailers as well as the film theatres this Friday.
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.
