In 2003, he wrote the screenplay for Calcutta Mail. He received his first award for this film, the Zee Cine Award for Best Screenplay. In 2008, he acted in his first international film, the Golden Globe and Academy Award winning Slumdog Millionaire, as the character Constable Srinivas. In 2013, he appeared as policeman Sudhanshu Dutta in Barfi!, a film through which Director Anurag Basu and co-actor Ranbir Kapoor, he said, "revived [him] as an actor".