In college, he was an Akshay Kumar fan, often deliberately missing a bus only so he could chase it like his screen idol did in a sequence in Khiladiyon Ka Khiladi 1996. He has, for so long, played the part of the avid admirer that Jaideep Ahlawat is surprised to find himself on the other side of the table today. Since Paatal Lok dropped online, there has been a constant celebration, and a deserving one at that, around Ahlawat, who plays inspector Hathiram Choudhary in the Amazon Prime Video offering. "I don-t understand the term -overnight stardom-. I don-t know how to react when people acknowledge me as a star," says the actor candidly.

But describing Ahlawat as the product of overnight stardom would be lazy, if not uninformed. The actor, who graduated from the Film & Television Institute of India FTII in 2008, has been quietly laying the foundation of a solid career all the while as Bollywood obsessed over its next six-pack-abs hero or rolled out the red carpet for the next star kid. It-s not surprising then that his first breakout role was in Anurag Kashyap-s Gangs of Wasseypur 2012, followed by Meghna Gulzar-s Raazi 2018.