Hindi
Shraddha Kapoor receives vintage Piaget gold watch from dad Shakti Kapoor for birthday
MUMBAI: Actress Shraddha Kapoor gets a solitaire to cherish for life from her beloved father Shakti Kapoor on her 26th birthday. She was gifted a vintage Piaget gold watch worth Rs 7 lakhs from Shakti Kapoor’s personal collection, which is close to his heart. They say a mother’s belonging is passed on to her daughter as a tradition but here the actress has been blessed with a possession from her dad’s treasure.
“I have a huge collection of watches and this one was a particular favourite of hers (Shraddha)”, says Kapoor about the gold watch.
Adding to how precious this gift is to his daughter, Bollywood’s iconic actor says, “She used to eye this watch when she was a kid so this time I thought, it’s her birthday so why not surprise my princess. So I decided to gift her watch not only because I love her but because I’m really very proud of her.”
To celebrate Shraddha’s birthday dad Shakti Kapoor cancelled his flight to Delhi, “I cancelled my flight and was with her all afternoon since she has a shoot in the night these days for her upcoming film ABCD 2, we couldn’t do the midnight celebrations but we organized a family lunch with all of her favourite dishes. “
Shakti lists his daughter’s birthday lunch menu, “Shraddha is a big seafood lover. So there was prawn curry, crab cakes, fish curry and prawn biryani. And actually we had it all. I was eating for almost one-and-a-half hours until Shraddha stopped me by saying, ‘Papa that’s enough.’”
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.
