Long read: The life of Puja: How a young woman from rural Bengal became an internet star

Nolina Minj’s insightful article on the remarkable Ms Pradhan begins by helping us city sophisticates understand something that we take for granted: “…college was not only about being ignored by those who seemed, at the time, better than her. It introduced Pradhan – now a 26-year-old influencer who goes by the name of @lifeofpujaa on Instagram – to the internet.

… she said. “I wouldn’t know the world outside if it were not for the internet. But people won’t necessarily teach it to you. You find out by going online,” she said.”

Puja’s fame has allowed her to make money and she has invested part of these earnings on books and movies which would elude most city sophisticates: “In less than a year, Pradhan’s Instagram account, where she posts in English about her life as a woman in an East Midnapore village, has gathered 7.5 lakh followers, brand deals from Netflix and Audible – and a not-inconsiderable fandom.

She speaks to her followers about the books she reads and the films she watches – Rosarita by Anita Desai and The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe, the films of Japanese actor and director Takeshi Kitano – and shares her feminist reflections on womanhood and motherhood. As a woman in a rural setting who knows her mind and speaks in English, she challenges stereotypes about who is considered intellectual and influential.”

Scholars from across India are beginning to notice the unusual power and punch of what Puja has to say: “Prerana Subramaniam, a cultural studies scholar and content creator herself, says that Pradhan “quietly unsettles a hierarchy through her content”.

“What makes Pujarini Pradhan stand out is not only that she speaks about books, films, and ordinary life in English, but the setting and the composure from which she does it,” Subramaniam said. “She speaks from a domestic, small-town world that Indian audiences still do not automatically associate with intellectual authority, aesthetic confidence, or interpretive ease. That is why her presence feels larger than ‘content’.””

Puja is representative of the new breed of confident, well-educated Indian women we meet in our travels. These are NOT women India’s urban elite. These are well-educated, well-informed women who are forming an unique, entirely original, edgy worldview. Here are excerpts from Puja’s interview with Nolina Minj:

“Pradhan is the eldest daughter among three siblings from a rural family in East Midnapore…She is also the first in the family to finish a bachelor’s degree. Her father is a shopkeeper and her mother a homemaker.

Pradhan considers herself privileged for having completed her graduation in English honours. “If I hadn’t gone far to attend college then I might not have attained the kind of exposure I did,” she said.

After her graduation, she wanted to study for a Master’s degree and find a job.

But the Covid-19 lockdown resulted in her spending one and a half years at home, during which she faced intense pressure from her mother to get married.

As she had said in her posts, Pradhan did not want to marry early in life. “Whenever I used to say no to marriage, she would accuse me of having a romantic relationship …” she told Scroll. “She couldn’t understand that people could have desires in life other than getting married.”…So, at the age of 21, she was married to a man from a neighbouring village….

…About eight months ago, Pradhan began playing around with making video stories and posting on Instagram. As a digital native, she had experimented with social media a lot and even ran a meme account earlier, but she was hesitant to focus on herself. “Whenever I used to see a new app, I would end up opening an account,” she said….

One day in September, while she was cooking, Pradhan kept her phone on top of a box and spoke into the camera in English about how she was often mocked for making reels.

When she checked her account an hour later, she was stunned to see that it had received 50,000 views. Her first fear, however, was that she would be judged for her English. “I don’t speak English in my daily life,” she said. “And for four-five years, I had not even practised speaking it.”

She made another video, explaining that she was posting in English so that people in her village would not follow what she said, and would not mock her. “That is the reel which went the most viral. I got one lakh followers because of that reel.”

Soon, Pradhan realised that people were interested in her and her thoughts…She made reels on a range of themes that she thought her audience would connect with – curly hair, body hair, patriarchal rituals in weddings….

Her day starts around 7.30 in the morning. Both her mother-in-law and her husband share household chores and make adjustments for Pradhan to be able to make content.

“My mother-in-law knows that I do this work so she doesn’t wake me up,” she said. In the mornings, if she is not cooking lunch, she helps out in the kitchen and then escapes to the terrace for a bit to work.

As a young mother with a two-year-old son, her day revolves around taking care of him. In the afternoons, when her son takes a long nap, Pradhan watches films, shoots or edits her videos. In the evenings, she sits next to her son and reads.

It is her husband who cooks in the evenings. At night, when her family has fallen asleep, Pradhan gets time to read, edit and prepare for her videos, at times staying up as late as 1 in the morning….

Lately, Pradhan has also begun sharing extended videos, set to music and shot like films that capture the beauty of the mundane in her daily life. They have received a lot of praise, with some fans observing that Pradhan has “a filmmaker’s eye”.…

The internet was her portal to cinema. “I wouldn’t have access to these films if not for the internet,” …She added: “We have made our pathway on our own, by figuring out what we need to do to access things.”

When I asked Pradhan what her favourite films were, she shot off a long list of international and Bengali films – Ritwick Ghatak’s Titas Ekti Nadir Naam and Satyajit Ray’s Mahanagar, Perfect Days by Wim Wenders and Little Forest by Yim Soon-rye.

“Little Forest is a Korean film about a young woman who leaves her job in the city and goes to live in a village,” Pradhan said. “She grows vegetables, and revives friendships with her childhood friends, wanders about in her cycle, cooks things the way her mother did. She lives her life in her own way. Watching that film was a very peaceful experience.”…

…People also make the mistake of assuming that Pradhan is poor….she said. “But I’ve never claimed in my videos that I’m poor. I think our income is adequate and keeps me economically stable…. We might not be rich but we have never struggled for food. We are comparatively privileged. I am privileged because my mother sent me to college.”

As the mainstream media fades away, it is on social media that edgy Indians will make their voices heard and then one day, these voices will change the world for the better.