When it comes to influencing, not every influencer has a ring light, a feed of aestheticised content, a carefully constructed personal brand prepared for them or wait…hopping up on every trend like a battery-powered spiral toy.
Some come in subtly between cooking their meals, reading their books or living their lives and somehow..teach us to live ours?
This was the case for Pujarini Pradhan, better known as LifeofPujaa, who entered people’s feeds in this way.. and wait, is refusing to leave?
Pujarini is a small-town content creator from East Midnapore district in rural West Bengal. Instead of building up her presence with flamboyance, Pujarini has built up her audience through simplicity, relatability and pharaatedaar English.
Pujarini creates simple videos. In her videos, she will talk about books, she will talk about movies, she will talk about skin-care or how she spends her day; she is often filming herself as she moves around her house with her children sometimes running in and out of frame, her background being the original space unaltered by aesthetic curation.
However, despite being quite simple, the simplicity of these videos has been enough for Pujarini to grow to a point of having over five lakh followers on Instagram, one other Instagram account (Little Ordinary Things) which has been specifically used for book/movie recommendations, and tens of thousands of followers on Facebook.
What a flex, madam ji.
But unfortunately, while the internet that first embraced Pujarini has now begun to question her existence.
It would have been different if this would have been yet another “Aaj puja, kal koi dooja” narrative, where people simply move on from one influencer to another. But wait, people are not bored of her, NOT AT ALL.
Instead, they wanna dig deeper in her life and question every aspect of it.
The New Narrative of Pujarini Pradhan – “Too Real To Be Real?”
In recent days, a new narrative has developed around Pujarini Pradhan, specific to the fact that her rise to fame may not be organic. Some online voices say that Pujarini may actually be an “Industry Plant,” which indicates that her content, style, tone and way of growing appear too set up and not totally organic.
The “desification” of some characters on the internet typically to strike a chord of relatability is truly irritating. But the Internet found Pujarini to be one of them with zero evidence at hand.
That is, given Pujarini creates content regularly, uses the English Language and gained her audience at an oh-my-god level speed, most likely she has some form of structure behind it.
Yet another question that seems difficult is, when did being articulate, consistent, and intelligent start disqualifying you as “authentic?”
It is too easy to regard these things with suspicion and look past them to the deeper to discover our own biases on who we expect to see as authentic.
The Content That Built Her Audience
Let’s examine some of what Pujarini produces as part of this debate.
Pujarini’s videos are not about high-concept ideas or artifice; instead, they show her simple lifestyle. For example, she does a video where she sits in a chair re-creating the vibe of reading Khaled Hosseini’s “A Thousand Splendid Sun” as she speaks about the characters and what she enjoys about the style of writing.
Alternatively, for another video, she uses yet another good example, showing viewers a small, handcrafted toothbrush holder made for her by her husband. She describes it as a small but meaningful act in her and his relationship. Pookies pookie-ing together!
She has very curious moments as well; the first time she eats pizza, she observes pizza before eating it and her reactions to the pizza are genuine without overdramatizing.
Some of her videos also portray various sights in Bengal. For example, she creates pakodas using sojne phul (the flowers from the moringa or drumstick tree). She describes each of the ingredients, including the moringa (drumstick), when making this dish to let her audience know how to cook this dish and tells a cultural story about how moringas are used in everyday cooking.
This is the beauty of Pujarini’s content. It focuses on the little things, and that’s exactly why people dig it.
Speaking In English—And Why This Is of Greater Importance Than it Appears
One of the more talked about parts of Pujarini’s videos is the fact that she (as well as many of her audiences) speak English fluently, however with a strong Bengali accent. It is not performative (or idealistic), but it is useful, expressive, and distinctly Pujarini.
She has spoken plainly about making this choice and how using English allows her to be distanced somewhat from the context surrounding her; the context where women who put themselves online are judged.
By this, we mean that language, for her, is not just a tool; it also serves as a means of negotiating.
For her, language is like aspiration but it also serves as a means of protection. It is the most heart-warming and yet heartwrenching juxtaposition of her life.
Who Gets to Be an Influencer?
Our perception of, and the unspoken criteria we utilize to decide who is allowed to appear and claim their message and influence, has shifted many times since Pujarini existed as an artist/creator.
The discomfort that we experience when the criteria we follow is challenged by someone who does not conform to the expected standard/cliché, who does not reach potentiality through extravagance or an extravagant life, challenges the entire concept of what is considered an art-form.
When someone who does not fit the established mold and yet gains attention through sincere-ness, it causes a need for recalibrating the perception of and to what extent they exist in society. This re-calibration generally makes people uncomfortable.