Hindi
Sujoy Ghosh mulls Kahaani 2 with Amitabh Bachchan
MUMBAI: Sujoy Ghosh, who had vowed to have his close associate Amitabh Bachchan in all his forthcoming films in any capacity, after he directed the veteran super star in Aladin, is mulling with the idea of working with the megastar in Kahaani 2, the sequel to his successful 2012 thriller Kahaani.
The director, who has achieved a lot of fame with Kahaani, was speaking to this writer on the sidelines of a recent award function in which he annexed the best story writer award with Advaita Kala for Kahaani.
“I am assuring you that Amitabh Bachchan will be part of Kahaani 2 in some way or the other. His blessings matter a lot to me. I can‘t see myself making any films without him,” Sujoy observed. Incidentally, Bachchan who was not in the ensemble cast of Kahaani, had lent his voice for the song Ekla chalo re.
The director says he will roll the camera as soon as the script is locked.
Asked as to when he would embark on shooting the film, Sujoy quipped, “I am still scripting the film so I can‘t say exactly when I will start shooting. The story will be a continuation from where we have left Kahaani. He however spilled the beans on Vidya Balan‘s role in the film. “She will be seen in an action avatar,” he added.
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.
