E-Paper
Happy feet: Follow Ruhee Dosani’s quickstep to Instagram fame
Self-taught dancer Ruhee Dosani has 2.3 millions fans on Instagram while also working a job in IT. So, which one is the job and which one is the side hustle?
For someone with 2.3 million followers on Instagram, Ruhee Dosani (@ruheedosani), doesn’t follow the usual algorithm favourites. She’s typically in oversized menswear. Her face, devoid of makeup; her eyes, usually hidden behind sunglasses; her hair in a long braid more suited to high school.
Dosani, 26, doesn’t even set her Reels to trending music. Instead, the self-taught dancer performs to old ad jingles (“Washing powder, Nirma”, “Badshah Masala”) and grooves to classic Navratri songs. A-listers regularly make appearances on her feed: She danced with Aamir Khan to the popular Punjabi number Dhol Jageeroon Da on Baisakhi last year. (The clip has close to 9,25,000 views). She’s played cricket with Sachin Tendulkar, oiled her hair with Priyanka Chopra and munched on popcorn with Sonakshi Sinha. Last week, she was at Cannes, walking the red carpet at the film festival.
And this is a woman who only started out two years ago. “I wasn’t even familiar with the word content at the time,” Dosani says. “I have always loved dancing and performing.” In Kandivli, Mumbai, where she grew up, neighbourhood aunties would eagerly wait for her to perform at Ganesh Chaturthi or Navratri community events. “I loved that they loved my performance and that I could bring a smile to their faces,” says Dosani.
So, when she made her first videos, Dosani was living in the US, by herself. Her father had passed away eight years ago. Her mother, Mohinder Kaur, an older brother, and those aunties were a long way away. What Dosani was really doing, as she danced with friends to ’90s Bollywood songs, was merely trying not to feel homesick.
Life was tough enough. Dosani had a US passport so she moved back easily. But she didn’t enrol in college. “I couldn’t. Coming from a middle-class family, going abroad just to live the campus life was not for me,” she says. “My goal was to figure life out first.” She started working at a coffee shop. Two months in she got a second job, at an unheated e-commerce warehouse in cold, cold Maryland.
For a while, all she did was work – getting by on four hours of sleep. “Thankfully, I am a fast learner and a good problem solver,” says Dosani. Even without any formal education in software or computers, she mastered enough logistics tech to do well enough in just the warehouse job. She stayed on five years before applying for an IT job. “I got it, even without a degree, thanks to my work experience,” she says. Finally, some free time.
She used it to dance and make videos, the enthusiasm from the Kandivli community stage bubbling out of her in a faraway land. She followed her heart, not the social-media template, picking popular ’90s songs with bold, energetic moves that relay full Bollywood dhamaal. Then, a few of them went viral. Punjabi singer and actorDiljit Dosanjhshared the clip in which she dances to his song G.O.A.T., catapulting the homesick IT migrant from Maryland to fame.
“I got so much love for that video,” says Dosani. Ever the quick learner, she figured out that she could make money from content creation, and began building videos for big brands, flying to London, Bahrain, Dubai and beyond. Her experience and discipline with working two jobs helped. Plus, living away from family, there were few distractions.
Dosani still wakes up at dawn, works out, clocks in four hours at her full-time IT job, and spends the remaining daylight hours creating content. Then, she heads back to her desk to clock in another four hours at the office before getting five to six hours of sleep. “I like to pack in as much as I can during the day. Work hard, tire my body and get amazing sleep,” she says. It’s honestly hard to tell which one is the job and which one is the side hustle.
But it’s clear which one is more fulfilling. “In the beginning, so much was happening so fast, I had no time to process it all,” says Dosani. She only realised she should be taking breaks after she was exhausted recently. “I also have my mother and my closest friends to keep me grounded if I begin to get cocky,” she says. “Living alone in the US has taught me to not take anything for granted, right from home-cooked meals to strangers who agree to feature in my videos. A lot of people are inhibited when it comes to dancing. When approaching strangers to do it on camera, one must be absolutely comfortable with rejection” she says.
At Cannes, where she recently danced to Daler Mehendi’s Bolo Tara Ra Ra,Dosani chose a quiet intersection a little away from her hotel, where no one would be disturbed. Dosani then started asking people on the street if they would dance with her. “This is one time when no one said no,” she says joyously. “In fact, a gentleman approached me to be a part of the video. It was all done in 30 minutes.”
This is possible because Dosani arrives prepared. She has a script in mind, and her steps, making it easier for herself, the crew and the people in her clips. There are days of self-doubt. Is she creating enough? Is the vibe getting monotonous? “But there is no point stressing,” the dancer says. “What’s important is to make the most of what you have today and keep learning new things. The love from fans makes it all worthwhile. “I relate to Indians in foreign countries who tell me how they miss the country and their people,” says Dosani. “Comments from families and friends make me feel like I’m home.”
On her ultimate wish list of collaborators are Diljit Dosanjh and Ranveer Singh. “With these two, I just don’t want to make a video but work on larger projects. I am manifesting it to happen,” she says. Her mother, meanwhile, wants her to graduate. “I want to as well and I will, just for her,” says Dosani. That well-honed sense of discipline will come in handy.
