From TikTok, Instagram to a YouTube sensation, the journey of the brother sister dancer duo Sanatan Mahto and Savitri Mahto continues from non descript Kusmtand village in Baliapur block, garnering one million viewership on YouTube and 1.86 lakh following on Instagram.

Sanatan, 26, a post graduate in Political Science from P.K. Roy Memorial College in Dhanbad was unemployed in 2019 before he started shooting his dance, lifestyle and comic videos through which he has earned around Rs 12 lakh in the last year of the pandemic.

“Yes indeed life has changed for me and my family over two years as we have carried out renovation of our house and also constructed a room, put a gate on village house, procured advance version camera for shooting videos and procured a bike, laptop etc,” said Sanatan and added despite success they are keeping their foot on the ground and most of their videos are related to their rural life.

Sanatan received formal dance training at a private institute in Dhanbad from 2012 to 2018.

“Though initially I started uploading my solo videos but the viewership was dismal and later on I started making duet dance videos along with my elder sister Savitri after giving some training to her and shot from my mobile phone.”

“Our dance video on the bollywood number Pyar hamara amar rahega had 9.5 million views and 1.2 million likes while a comedy video titled Ek din had 2.7 million views and 1.9 million likes,” said Sanatan.

“Though initially the response was not good but the popularity drastically increased during the lockdown since people were spending more time on mobile phones watching social media sites etc,” said Sanatan.

“I am more happy about another aspect of our venture as people of remote areas like ours where dance was treated as a taboo, are now accepting dance and allowing even the girls to pursue dance,” further said Mahto.

Sanatan’s father is a small time father and part time daily wage earner who was the sole bread earner of the family till lockdown hit and the family was in dire straits.

His brother suffers from chronic diabetes and the family could not afford medical expenses for him.

“Elder sister Savitri Kumari who is also my dance partner used to support the family income working as a teacher in a local private school of Baliapur but that school also closed down during lockdown aggravating our financial difficulties,” said Sanatan

“My message for the youth is very simple, don’t waste time pursuing such careers for which you don’t have any aptitude and instead concentrate on your passion,” said Sanatan who used to provide dance training to his village youth before switching to YouTube.

“Regularity is the second most important requirement for success as we have continued our video streak ever since February 2019 when I uploaded my first dance video on youtube,” signed off Sanatan.