In a nondescript village in West Bengal’s East Midnapore district, an Instagram creator, Pujarini Pradhan, or Puja as she is popularly called, spends her days performing the million chores that consume the lives of homemakers across India from dawn to dusk, be it chopping vegetables, cooking, folding laundry, mending clothes, or looking after her young son. However, it is what she does in the little pockets of time she can steal for herself that first secured her collaborations with Audible and Netflix, and then made her the target of a smear campaign by fellow influencers who questioned her authenticity.
Pradhan spends her free time watching niche art-house films and reading serious literature. She shares her takeaways from the same for her 800,000 followers–including celebrities and popular Instagram influencers– who follow her on the twin handles @lifeofpujaa and @little_ordinary_thingss. Her reels show her critiquing in fluent English, the Al Pacino-starrer 1973 crime film Serpico, the filmography of South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook or reading passages from A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.
Her appeal lies the juxtaposition of her humble abode and unassuming attire with her sharp intellect. She speaks of Rabindranath Tagore and why black-and-white films continue to appeal to critics, while performing unglamorous household chores such as mending a dupatta.
Speaking in English, a language she chose just so that her neighbours do not understand what she is saying should they stumble across her reels, she advocates for gender parity. She speaks from her own experiences as a married woman in rural India, and what she sees in the society around her. A feminist, she regularly criticises the many ways in which patriarchy continues to crush women by perpetuating seemingly benign traditions be it washing one’s husband’s feet or always keeping one’s hair tied after marriage.
To her followers, she is proof that intellectual rigour can thrive outside the silos of urban elite. They cheer for Pradhan, who despite being married against her wishes, was, through sheer will and ingenuity, able to loosen the yolks of class, caste, and gender, and create a steady stream of income for herself, through her passions of reading and watching films, which women in some rural areas are still precluded from.
However, her success was met by skepticism by at least a couple of influential social media influencers, who accused her of manipulating the audience. One of them Aishwarya Subramanyam, whose Instagram handle is called @otherwarya, called her an industry plant, which refers to artists or influencers who pretend to be independently “underground” or authentic while actually being backed by a corporate or political machine.
Her detractors wondered how a woman of modest means in rural India could purchase the expensive hardcover books that feature in her videos, how a homemaker could possibly find the time to read and watch serious literature and films while managing a full household, and how was she, if not supported by a behind the scenes team, able to churn out well-produced videos. Some wondered whether her English with a pronounced Bengali accent was fake, and how she knew of colour grading, if she was, as she claimed, a simple homemaker in rural India.
They also floated the theory that she was actually a managed by a political party or a talent agency based in Mumbai.
Puja claps back
In a detailed statement, Pradhan revealed that she had signed with an agency in November 2025. At the time, she was handling everything, including ideation, filming, and editing herself. The agency, she said, never helped her with any of it. She reveled that when they offered her Rs 30,000 for two brand videos, she readily accepted. “It was a lot for me,” she said. However, one month later, she discovered the agency had signed the deal with the brand for Rs 2 lakh. Their revised offer was to give her Rs 60,000, from which she was expected to return 20 per cent.
“When I got to know about this, I immediately left the agency and got in touch with some creators and talked about it,” she said. “So you can understand I was getting scammed.”
She says she did not publicise the dispute at the time because she was scared.”I did not talk about it on social media because I did not want to create trouble because I was alone. And I don’t know who can help me.”
On January 9, she posted a video sharing how she had been handling all aspect of her social media alone, but by January 27, she had signed with a new agency, her current team. “I never knew money could come in so consistently in this field, and I was amazed,” she said.
“Even my current team only handles my brand deals,” she told her followers. “They don’t help me with editing, scripting or shooting. I don’t have a team in my home to help me. I did all by myself because I have that capability in myself.”
“If I wanted to hide the fact that I have a team now,” she added. “I would not be dragging my manager publicly.”
The rhythm of domesticity
Perhaps the most cutting attack has been on the logistics of her output. Critics argued that her consistency in posting, while managing a household was evidence that she was being disingenuous.
Pradhan explained that her family supports her initiative. “My mother-in-law cooks during the day, and my husband cooks at night,” she said.
On how she was able to afford the pricey hardcover books or review films without attending film school, Pradhan pointed to her Amazon wishlist, which has been linked in her bio for months. “Most of my audience knows that,” she said. “I often share stories of people giving me books.”
“The movies I have recommended, I have already watched years ago from 2018. Most of them are logged on Letterboxd,” she said, explaining her formidable knowledge about cinema.
Mocked for learning new skills like color grading, she clapped back expressing her confusion over the brouhaha. “Like it’s hard?” she asked. “I thought anyone can do it.”
Her reviews, she insists, are not the work of a trained critic but of an enthusiastic amateur. “Believe me, I always thought my reviews are very simple, not something complicated things to be researched. I thought I am doing bare minimum. I have to better. I have to watch more films.”
Why the backlash
Pradhan says she has pinpointed exactly what irked her detractors from the moment when the tone of the commentary shifted. “They were fine until I started giving my opinions on feminism or anything, any politics or anything, because they want me to see suffering in every video,” she said.
“They want me to complain about my life. They want me to be sad. But the moment I started earning money from my videos and the moment I started giving liberal opinions or feminism or anything, they felt like I am in danger,” she said in her video.
She addressed the claim that she had once said she did not want the limelight and then allegedly traveled to Mumbai. “This was completely wrong,” she said. “I actually went to Kolkata. And I was not paid by any political party. I do not associate myself with any political party.”
The limelight she had referred to earlier, she said, was the prospect of news reporters arriving at her home.
Who gets to be an intellectual?
As the accusations multiplied, Pradhan began to see them as part of a larger pattern.
“I think there’s a very thin line between questioning someone and tearing them down—their reputation and their image—for just assumptions,” she said.
“Question me. Treat me like any other influencer. I never asked to be treated differently. But don’t try to discredit my efforts and hard work just because you had assumptions.”
She rejected the characterisation of herself as a scapegoat in a larger cultural debate. “This lady said that she didn’t want to be the scapegoat for some Puja, but I think we all know who was actually made the scapegoat in this entire analysis,” she said, referencing to Niharika Jain, a therapist and influencer, who was among the loudest voices questioning her credibility and authenticity.
“This is not just about me,” Pradhan continued. “This is about everyone coming from a place with limited resources and trying to build something on their own. I built this from nothing. If I am an industry plant, I did not know what an industry plant was until I started researching about it.”
The bigger picture
The backlash against Pradhan reflects a deeper anxiety in the Indian digital sphere, which for many creators has become a primary source of income, and where the lines between organic fandom and manufactured celebrity are blurring.
But for those who see themselves in Pradhan—women in small towns, first-generation learners, and people who consume culture on smartphones—the industry plant accusation has been interpreted as gatekeeping. “Imagine having your limited resources questioned and also pulling someone down just because you think they are not authentic,” she said. “I think it’s not a solid reason to create such drama.”
While Jain has made her profile private, Pradhan stands by her response and she continues to film herself, talking about cinema, feminism and books in her humble abode.
“Everything is available on the internet,” she said. “You can watch anything, you can do anything, you can learn anything. So it’s not that tough.”
The controversy has raised a number of pertinent questions. In India’s digital economy, who is allowed to be an intellectual? Who is allowed to earn a living from it? And why, when someone from a place with limited resources succeeds, the first instinct to suspect a conspiracy rather than to credit the work?
Pujarini Pradhan is a creator who discusses literature and films. (Screengrab/@@lifeofpujaa) 
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