“This is unbelievable. I’m speechless,” the 36-year-old kept saying when not letting out shrieks of pure joy over the phone. And at this special moment, it was Mumbai which was on top his mind. “It’s Mumbai which made me. The film is also about the city. I owe my success to the city,” Pookutty, who has made the city his home for the last 12 years after graduating from FTII, Pune, told Newsline.

While Mumbai went crazy over his Oscar nomination, Pookutty was more ecstatic over the CAS Award.

“That’s bigger than the Oscar for sound technicians like me,” he said. The coming weeks will see him turn into a globe-trotter as he plans to attend all the three international award ceremonies where he has been nominated—the BAFTA Awards on February 8, the CAS award on February 14 and the Oscar Awards on February 22.

The sound technician, who started his film career with Rajat Kapoor’s lesser-known film Private Detective (1997), has more than 20 films on his filmograph. However, it’s the song-less movie Black that drew the industry’s attention to Pookutty. In later years, Ghajini, Sawaariya, Dus Kahaniyaan, Gandhi My Father, Zinda and Bluffmaster made him a name to look for on a film’s credit roll.