Our Cinema Is Not About Perfect Stories

An underrated ‘actor’s actor’, Gulshan Devaiah talks to Ahad Sanwari about his web-series debut with Smoke, playing grey characters and being a part of the digital movement. Read on…

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As a South Indian, it mustn’t have been easy playing a Bihari gangster for Smoke. Were there any particular challenges you faced?

I just needed to know how much time I had to prepare. Of course, getting the language right was a challenge. The thing to crack is that every dialect and language has a rhythm, a manner of speaking, it’s not exactly the accent per se. One of my co-actors, Amit Sial gave me a recording of my monologue in his voice. So I would listen to that as my primary reference material. I don’t even know how many times I must’ve listened to it! Even when I was in Greece on holiday, every now and then I would get the earphones out and plug them in and listen to what he was saying. Maybe I would’ve liked a couple of more weeks, but I knew I was going in the right direction. But I loved the challenge of the role. And I loved the faith that the makers put in me to pull off a Bihari guy.

You often say that your roles, including the one in Smoke, are more grey than black or white. Do you deliberately choose such parts or do you just end up with them?