Movies
Telugu Indian Idol makes a grand return with a new season on aha
Mumbai: Over the last three years, aha, the local OTT, has always aimed at providing its viewers with clutter-breaking shows and entertaining content. With its latest launch, ‘Telugu Indian Idol 2,’ aha is set to unleash a wave of musical magic that will resonate globally. The biggest singing stage opened with a befitting, star-studded launch event in Nellore with 15,000 people attending it on-ground with lacs watching it from their homes on YouTube Live across Telugu speaking states and the global Telugu speaking diaspora.
The highlights of the evening were the breathtaking performances by this year’s judges SS Thaman & Geetha Madhuri and host Hemachandra. The event also had given a preview of season’s audition glimpse and promo anthem which was sung by Karthik, Geetha Madhuri, Hemachandra and music by SS Thaman. The season is set to premiere exclusively on aha on 3 March 2023. There was a surprise wild card entry announced for the season on this stage which got everyone’s interest piqued.
The event also showcased the larger content promise from aha for the quarter and launched two of its biggest assets – Newsense, a webseries headlined by Navdeep & Bindu Madhavi and directed by Praveen Kumar Reddy. Navdeep, Bindu Madhavi and Praveen Kumar attended the event and engaged with audiences. The show is a gripping narrative of how journalism works and is set in Madanapally in the 90’s. Aha also launched Mandakini, the second daily series centered on mythology and the supernatural.
The event unveiled the statue of Late singer SP Balasubramanyam, the maestro who ruled south music industry for five decades whose hometown also happens to be Nellore.
Aha verse was the special attraction to the crowd at Nellore where the content universe of aha is merged seamlessly in the world of metaverse. Aha marketing head Kartheek said that, “The event is a mega success and has set the tone for this season. While Nellore is the hometown for music talents like SPB garu and Thama, this city also gave a lot of love for Telugu Indian Idol Season one by being the city that has watched the highest number of minutes”.
The team from Fremantle was present at the event and Ujjwal Anand said ‘The power of Telugu Music lovers had made Season one a massive hit and Season two is going to be bigger and better’.
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.
