From a chawl in Tollygunge to the finals of Zee TV’s Dance India Dance (DID), Biki Das has jived a long way. The 20-year-old, the first finalist from Bengal in the DID singles format, spoke to t2 ahead of the face-off at Andheri Sports Complex in Mumbai, to be telecast on Saturday evening (8pm on Zee TV).

On his starting-out years…

You ask anyone in the area near Rabindra Sarobar Metro station about the boy who dances and they will point to our home in the chawl in the lane opposite Bhawani cinema. I studied till Class IX and dropped out of school as dance was the only thing that mattered to me. My father, a grille welder, was very upset and said he would not have me loafing about. So I did odd jobs — assisting my father or doing house-keeping chores in shopping malls. If I earned Rs 2,500 a month I gave Rs 1,500 to him. That gave my father the confidence that I had not fallen into bad company.

I also made enough to enrol in Ajazz Academy of Performing Arts in Tollygunge where I took dancing lessons. I had auditioned for shows like Chak Dhoom Dhoom, Just Dance and India’s Got Talent earlier but not DID as I was not ready for the biggest dance show. This time, boys in my mohalla suggested that I go for DID. And here I am in the finals!

His best act on the show…

The act for which I dressed in tiger hide as Lord Shiva and mixed crumping with the tandava style. It was named Sankrump, or Sankara’s crumping. The production team had worked a lot on the act, creating a volcano with LED in the background to set the mood for Shiva’s rage. I got a grand salute from the Grandmaster (Mithun Chakraborty). Frankly, none of my acts has failed to get a ‘kya baat’ (a seated salute) or a grand salute (a standing salute) from him.

His weak-kneed moment…

Meeting Madhuriji (Dixit). People die to get a glimpse of her and there I was dancing in her presence. It was a robotic act to a mix of her songs, including Dola re (Devdas). She could not speak for a few moments after my act ended, and then blurted out that she could not even imagine that such moves were possible with those songs. My act was adjudged the Performance of the Day.

Being the only contestant left from mentor Feroz Khan’s team…

That means a lot of experiments were done on me. But it also meant extra care. Whenever I was doing parkour or an aerial act, the whole team stood by as a safety net. Every new style they asked me to do I would whine for a while: ‘Sir, mujhse nahin hoga’. Then Prince (choreographer and star dancer of DID Season 1) would chide me, saying: ‘Biki, naatak mat kar’. And when I would fetch yet another grand salute, he would break into that ‘I told you so’ grin.

Sizing up the competition…

Look back at the season and you will see it was I who did the most variations. Manan Sachdeva has his swag style in hip-hop. Sumedh Mudgalkar was happy to do popping, and strayed only for a few episodes to do contemporary and malkhamb. Shyam Yadav also mostly did Bollywood and contemporary. I came in trained in hip-hop, popping and crumping but did so much more.

On his dream…

My parents have never gone on a holiday. Ma in fact has never stepped out of Calcutta. I want to take them and my sister on a long vacation somewhere. Phatiye kamabo jaate ora boshey khete paare (I will earn a lot so that they can sit back and enjoy). If I can make enough money, a pucca house will surely be ours some day.

BIKI’S BIO

Age: 20 years
Education: Class IX dropout
Hails from: A slum in the Tollygunge area
Family: Father is a grille mechanic, mother a housewife. Has a younger sister.
Idol: Chris Brown. “Seen him on YouTube. He is a singer yet he dances so well.”