Most recently, Gulshan Devaiah, 41, played a zombie in Dibakar Banerjee’s segment of Netflix’s Ghost Stories. But he’s been making waves since 2011, when he appeared in Bejoy Nambiar’s Shaitan. Devaiah stands out. That’s the beauty of this NIFT graduate from Bengaluru; even in a crowd of very good actors, as in A Death in the Gunj, you remember him.

First I did whatever came to me. Then I started choosing projects that felt different. I started saying no. The reason, I think, is that what I wanted, changed. When I’m not acting any more, when I’m not here any more, I want people to remember me because of my versatility and the quality of the work I did.

I feel like Dibakar Banerjee is the best director we have right now in the country. He is keeping alive the legacy of Satyajit Ray, through his craft. So when he called me for this role, I was really charged. He narrated a half-hour story to me, we talked for over two hours, and I was transfixed.

Still, fleshing out a character that is more animal than human, with all the heavy prosthetics, was quite difficult. I live with cats and I observe animal behaviour closely. They can change their expressions between high, low and poker face very quickly. I tried to imitate that.