Kiku Sharda: I could not cope with the pressure in Jhalak

'I was constantly shooting. Sometimes I would shoot through the night and in the morning go to my next shoot without any sleep or just two hours of sleep,' Kiku Sharda tells Rajul Hegde.

Stand-up comedian and actor Kiku Sharda, who participated as Palak in the dance reality show Jhalak Dhikhhla Jaa 7, is the latest contestant to be eliminated.

Kiku says he was not able to cope with the pressure.

“I was mentally prepared to get evicted after I came in the danger zone for the third consecutive week. I wanted to get evicted because I was not getting enough time to prepare my acts due to my other commitments,” he said.

Kiku is acting in TV serials Akbar-Birbal, FIR as well as Comedy Nights With Kapil.

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"It was getting difficult for me to manage between shoots. I was not getting sufficient time to rehearse. The show had begun to take its toll on my health and family life," Kiku says.

“I was constantly shooting. Sometimes I would shoot through the night and in the morning go to my next shoot without any sleep or just two hours of sleep.”

From next week, the pressure on Jhalak mounts as contestants will have to present two acts in a week. Kiku says this would have been impossible for him to do.

“I wouldn't have been able to take that kind of pressure. It was reflecting on my dance and mood too,” he said.

Still, dancing on the show was fun and challenging. “I am passionate about dance and got to learn and be aware of many new dance forms.”

The actor says that he will miss the rehearsal schedules the most.

“We used to do three or four steps a day. At that time, I could barely understand what my act was all about. I thought the steps are very bland and the act would be rubbish. But when we connected all those steps, the act looked complete. It made me very happy to see how a dance sequence is planned.”

He also knows now what dance style suits him and what he should avoid.

“In future, if I get a chance to perform, I will go for hip hop, locking and popping. Indian is definitely not for me.

“Badtameez Dil performance (which had locking and popping) is my most memorable dance performance on the show,” he says.

Kiku entered the reality show as his popular screen avatar Palak. But after a few weeks, he discarded the girly image and performed as himself.

Does he think that the decision to perform as himself was wrong?

“The voting ID changed and this might have led to some confusion. Maybe people couldn't relate to me as a man but I enjoyed performing as one,” he says smiling.

What did his children think of his dancing?

“They enjoyed watching all my performances but I hardly got time with them,” he says.