Hindi
Salman Khan tops as highest taxpayer among film celebs
MUMBAI: It‘s heartening to note that Salman Khan, whose films have been grossing Rs 100 crore plus capped by his latest blockbuster Ek Tha Tiger has emerged as the highest taxpayer in Bollywood, forking out Rs 8 crore for the September quarter.
The 46-year old Salman trumped all his peers and rivals in the tinsel town paying Rs 8 crore in advance tax in July-September quarter this year as compared to Rs. 5 crore in the same period a year ago.
Khan‘s romantic-action-thriller Ek Tha Tiger has clocked approximately Rs 198 crore at the box office. He has also starred in other Rs 100 crore films like Dabangg, Ready and Bodyguard.
Following him was Akshay Kumar,who paid Rs 7.5 crore advance tax in comparison to Rs 5 crore he had paid last year during the same period. Following them way behind was Shah Rukh Khan, who has not had any big release this year as yet. His tax outgo was flat at Rs 5 crore.
Among the other Khans, Aamir paid Rs 3.25 crore as against Rs 4.50 crore last year. Saif Ali Khan, whose films Agent Vinod and Cocktail got mixed responses at the box office, paid a tax of Rs 3 crore compared to Rs 1.7 crore in the year ago period.
Incidentally, Amitabh Bachchan paid Rs 5 crore against the Rs 1.4 crore last year.
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.
