Hindi
Valmiki community want Tigmanshu Dhulia to change film title
MUMBAI: Looks like Paan Singh Tomar director Tigmanshu Dhulia is destined to land into controversies.
Recently, Dhulia had a brush with the CBFC when the censoring authority passed Dhulia’s inherently violent story like Paan Singh Tomar with a ‘UA‘ certification that allows it to be a suitable watch under parental guidance.
The director had to fight tooth and nail to prove that cleaning out the character‘s language would be tantamount to emasculating him. He waged a long battle and finally erased the expletives from the film.
Now Dhulia‘s next titled Valmiki Ki Bandook has kicked off a new storm. The Jimmy Shergill starrer has offended the sentiments of the Valmiki community in Punjab. It is said that after reading an article on the film in a local paper, the community reacted very strongly and made calls to Jimmy Shergill and Tigmanshu Dhulia (the creative director) to change the title.
A senior officer from Punjab police called up Shergill and cautioned him to change the title since the situation was very sensitive. He said that if they refrained from doing so, it could lead to riots in Punjab.
Said Shergill, “The film has got nothing to do with Sant Valmiki or the community. Valmiki happens to be my surname in the film. The title could also be Shergill Ki Bandook. It‘s a coming-of-age story. My director has assured them that we have no intention to hurt anyone‘s sentiments.”
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.
