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Journalism of Courage
For the last seven years, Finnish YouTuber Johanna North has been documenting her life in India — capturing moments both big and small — as she found her feet in a country thousands of miles away from home. But apart from a few clips shared on YouTube over the years, most of this footage hadn’t seen the light of day. That was until the 34-year-old mum-of-one moved to Payyanur, a small town in the Kannur district of north Kerala, just weeks before the nationwide Covid-induced lockdown brought life to a grinding halt.
“I couldn’t go to the gym, go make friends with our new neighbours or go explore our new hometown Payyanur. And all my travel plans got cancelled too,” Johanna recalls. “At this point we didn’t even own a TV!”
Confined to her home, Johanna decided to film a few sit-down videos, where she spoke about her experiences in India, interspersed with a few snippets of her everyday life with her husband Vinod, a government official, and their one-year-old daughter Annika. Her first big break came in April that year, when she shared a video titled ‘Why I chose to stay in India after the Coronavirus pandemic’. The video garnered over half a million views. “And things just took off from there.”
“My channel started growing quickly and by May, I was monetised on YouTube after just four months of making videos,” she tells indianexpress.com. “That kind of gave me a feeling of validation to keep going.” But it was never about the money. “I’m sure every creator likes to know that their voice matters and people like them.”
During the lockdown, her husband was her biggest cheerleader and fiercest critic. “Vinod was a huge help and support during the lockdown video making when we were stuck at home together. His feedback might be even brutal sometimes, but I wouldn’t have learned as much as I have without him telling me that something doesn’t work!” she says.
In fact, it was because of Vinod that Johanna decided to move to India from Finland in the first place. Like so many 21st century love stories, theirs began online.
In 2015, she had just landed her dream job as a social media executive at a fitness company in Finland’s capital, Helsinki. The 27-year-old seemed to have everything going for her — she was doing well at work, had her own apartment in the city and a great set of friends. “I realised that I was in a pretty good place in life,” she tells indianexpress.com. But there was still one thing left on her checklist — “I thought this was the right time to find myself a serious relationship.”
Little did she know that her search for love — which began on the dating website OkCupid — would ultimately lead her to Payyanur, where Vinod is based. “If back then someone would have told me I would end up in India for love, I seriously would have laughed,” she jokes. But that’s exactly what happened.
Soon after setting up her online dating profile, Johanna ‘matched’ with Vinod. After a few weeks of messaging, they decided to meet in person for the first time. Like most aspects of their relationship, their first ‘meet-cute’ was far from conventional — they met at the New Delhi airport, from where they set off on a two-week adventure together in Himachal Pradesh.
Riding pillion on a Royal Enfield Himalayan, selfie stick in hand, Johanna was able to document most of her trip with Vinod, who she eventually married in 2019. “I feel like meeting Vinod and moving to India eventually opened up a road towards my actual dreams,” she explains. Since the big move, Johanna has travelled to 23 states across the country. But her one big regret is not starting to vlog earlier.
Initially, most of Johanna’s content was centred around her experience in India as a foreigner. “I realised that a foreign girl in India will get a lot of views on YouTube,” Johanna candidly admits. “So initially I wanted to use that to get my channel growing.”
But from focussing on what she called the “foreigner in India point of view”, Johanna’s videos eventually started to evolve.
She knew that there was a fine line between celebrating and appropriating a culture. “This type of approach didn’t really work for me. I saw that videos of foreigners sitting on their couches and reacting to typically Indian things, or speaking Hindi, or eating street food, were getting a ton of views. But none of those were really my thing.”
“I have a lot of respect for the culture. I never wanted to take advantage of the Indian culture,” she said. “I do actually live here and I want to be part of this culture. So, I don’t want to pretend to be something that I’m not.”
Soon after the lockdown restrictions began to be lifted, Johanna and her family started travelling again. From an off beat eco-resort tucked away in the hills of Kannur, to her in-laws’ house in Haryana — Johanna documented each mini-vacation.
Her content became more personal. Without the excessive editing, overpowering soundtracks and other frills often associated with ‘family vlogs’ typically found on YouTube, Johanna documented her family’s experiences, both big and small, as they happened — nothing more, nothing less.
“I don’t want to do anything just for the sake of getting a good, interesting video out of it,” she says. “I only capture genuine moments that play out when my camera is on.”