I grew up in Mumbai in a family of four kids. It was a tough life as money was a major constraint. Dancing was always my hobby and a way to express myself.

My other passion was football and in 1991 I got into Mithibai College through the sports quota. I met Bosco Martis there who soon became my dance partner. That year we auditioned for the Filmfare Awards as back-up dancers and landed the job. We loved it and the next year we participated in a local amateur’s dance competition called Countdown Championship. We won this two years in a row. But I still wasn’t thinking about dancing as a career.

At this time I was working as a steward and had applied for a job in Muscat. When I was preparing to leave India, Bosco asked me to stay back. He took me to meet singer Raageshwari who was planning a video and this is when our lives took a huge turn for the better.

We choreographed her video Oye shava! which was a huge hit. Adman Prahlad Kakkar noticed us and we began working on ads. In 2000, Vidhu Vinod Chopra offered us the song rind posh maal in Mission Kashmir. This established us as choreographers of note. In 2003, our song Saki saki from Sanjay Gupta’s Musafir was a huge success. But it was the 2005 smash hit Dus bahane from Dus that made us famous.

The year 2009 was great for us. We won three major awards — the Screen and Filmfare awards for chor bazaari in Love Aaj Kal and the IIFA for zoobi doobi in 3 Idiots. But my biggest award that year was my son, Cristiano, being born.

Of late, we’ve been blown away with the response to the song senorita in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. And we are looking forward to the release of Rascals and Agent Vinod among others. My dream now is to direct a movie.

(As told to Amrita Mukherjee)