A 46-year-old  professor unknowingly dancing his way to Internet fame—a bit longer than what Andy Warhol predicted as “15 minutes of fame”—may still not help the uncles and fufajis shed their image of being seen as usual suspects while they recite their poetry, recount their exploits, and become repositories of unending tales.

What, however, is clear is that besides obvious brilliance and his age, it was the home-cooked musical domesticity which contributed to the viral appeal of Vidisha-based electronics professor Sanjeev Srivastava’s dance performance. Taking anything beyond the anonymity of that endearing domesticity would somehow ensure that the charm thins out.

The very nature of the Internet would somehow erode the professor’s distinct appeal. Overexposure and taking “viral” fame to structured platforms would be the undoing of it. Though it’s often, and correctly, argued that what accounts for the viral factor on the Internet defies logic and predictability, the popularity of Srivastava’s dance performance can be seen as a sum total of different things.

First, the setting of the performance: dancing at the sangeet function of his brother-in-law’s marriage in Gwalior. Many do, but he nailed it with the finesse of a seasoned performer but more significantly, with infectious joy and energy that had an amateurish purposelessness. All joyous forms of art have to derive their core from it—purposeless joy.

That was the most important achievement of his unannounced arrival on millions of mobile phone screens across the nation. In their reactions, people said his 90-second performance gave them joy, some even thought that it filled them with positivity and hope. In its essence, it was the triumph of the casual grace and excellence over the distant and impersonal professional.

The fact that he was a stage performer in his younger days didn’t come in the way of him bringing a whiff of spontaneity to the stage in his quadragenarian years as a professor in an engineering college. It’s a definite win for informal charm over formal predictability.

Second, the domesticity was well aided by anonymity, making it a celebration of the unknown over the known. There is type of impish glee that small town strikes back with discovering talent from its anonymous corners, talents that can easily give the best in the business a run for their money. So in a way, it was also the vicarious cheerleading of the unsung, a reminder of people’s unexplored selves.

Third, from a dancing point of view, the performance was remarkable not only for the action but the imagination of it. It makes a case for Sanjeev Srivastava the choreographer as much as it proves his smooth dancing moves. Revisiting the original number (Aapke Aa Jaane Se from Khudgarj,1987), the song’s picturisation had Govinda and Neelam grooving in a way that wasn’t always in sync with the tune while they tumble through the snow-covered landscape too. The professor possibly innovates and imagines what his dancing idol (Govinda) would have done if he had the freedom to have his way throughout the song.

His performance is a hypothetical Govinda, not a copied one. That’s where he goes a step further, not restricted to what’s available but showing what it could have been. In the process, he compensated for his wife’s apparent lack of dancing skills too, with his immaculately improvised moves for Neelam’s role.

Fourth, in its own way, the song is a late reparation for the exaggerated defamation of 1980s Bollywood cinema and music in particular. Much of such criticism is fair but it also ignores that it had its own ways of negotiating popular mood and turning it into commercial enterprises; Mithun and Govinda were two undisputed dancing sensations of the decade. However, Govinda scored over more technically accomplished dancers like Javed Jaffrey by going beyond mechanics and injecting his dance with a personal imprint of improvisation and a more relatable form of joy, his expressions ranging from artistic to rustic.

That appeal of Govinda, combined with comic timing in mainstream Hindi cinema of the 90s, continued to keep cash registers ringing. His popularity also witnessed a mass-class divide in theatres of metropolitan India of the 1990s and 2000s. For instance, the multiplexes in Delhi and Mumbai generally opted out of screening new Govinda releases, like Raja Babu (1994), Coolie No. 1 (1995), Hero No.1 (1997), and Dulhe Raja (1998).  The perception gained ground that Govinda was the star of the “downmarket”, whistling frontbenchers in non-air-conditioned theatres.

Two years ago, Govinda clearly identified the exclusivist nature of class-aesthetics driven camps in Bollywood and how they play referees for what they assume as “refined tastes”. For all his talent, he was never made part of big banner films or elite circle of Bollywood parties or even invited to chat shows by Karan Johar and his ilk. He hasn’t forgotten this snobbery. His mass connect somehow has received a late acknowledgement in a professor’s performance that is being seen as belonging to a Govinda genre of Bollywood dancing. It’s an afterglow that illuminates the nostalgic lane of a star in twilight.

The post-Govinda Hindi cinema dancing had outstanding dancers too, from Hrithik Roshan to Shahid Kapoor, and was preceded by dancing star Prabhu Deva. However, Govinda’s appeal transcended them because he carried with him something beyond technicalities. He embodied the domesticity of living rooms with the abandon of street grooving to produce something of his own. That’s unsurpassable in Bollywood dancing. Srivastava’s performance reminds us that Bollywood dancing can be sublime joy without the mechanical accomplishments of a Tiger Shroff.

It’s this rare blend of art and domesticity that threatens to erode his charm in days to come. A slew of his dancing videos have already been released in quick succession; he is getting drawn into the fickle world of instant stardom and responding to tweets from celebrities with a “dancing challenge”. From offering soundbites to television channels to giving long interviews, there’s a strong chance that people will lose interest. You can’t fault a young dancer who turned to academics and is now basking in the glory of his quite late and clearly unexpected, fame. What’s sadly clear though is that the platforms which catapulted him to popularity would strike back to undermine its very base: the familiar domesticity of his dancing personality and excellence cloaked under anonymity.

It takes a few million views to be known but sadly it also turns into an assembly line. That’s something that would ensure that you induce fatigue, not awe. Hopefully, the dancing uncle knows what made him awesome in the first place.