It will take a little while and hopping through a few of her videos to understand what Prapti Elizabeth, that famed Instagrammer, has been up to. With an exaggerated Kottayam dialect and the famous Kerala 'pucham' (scorn), Prapti turns into a stereotyical Malayali mother in one. In another, she transforms into an expatriate Malayali with a fake accent. Recently, Prapti has also been cladding herself in saris to become ‘Mrinalini’, a character who will in all her coyness, speak out about the most affecting issues of the time viz. the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) draft 2020.
“I started as a writer for Scoopwhoop and then India Today, putting out features and opinion pieces. Later, I moved to the video team. That’s how the videos began. I work now as a Talent (content creator) with Times Internet Limited,” Prapti says on an evening she’s too tired to talk. Nevertheless, she narrates the journey that led to her popular videos, that are scripted, edited and produced with the help of friends and professionals.
In her videos, Prapti switches effortlessly between three languages – as a Malayali raised in Delhi, she picked up English and Hindi along the way. Turning into a video content creator came with the job.
“I have stage fright. I still can’t speak in front of an audience. Shooting videos is different from doing a live show,” she says. Some may find that hard to believe, seeing the ease with which she transforms into characters and says her lines in her Instagram videos.
Days’ worth of work goes into these videos. Scripts get written in days. Takes and retakes happen, Prapti says.
She also does not want her own style creeping into her videos. She has developed characters with their own distinct attitudes. Mrinalini, at first, was envisioned as a 40-year-old woman, who, while giving unsolicited advice, also talked sense. It was after a friend’s suggestion that Mrinalini was conceived as a younger person, who persisted with her saris. She introduces herself in videos as a woman whose age, religion and caste are unavailable. She is also one who is ‘past her marriageable age, and marriage has not happened’.
“With Mrinalini, I have tried to subvert the entire idea of gossip,” Prapti says.
As Mrinalini, she takes on serious issues like the EIA draft, rape culture, feminism, sometimes reacting to problematic statements made by men like Rajith Kumar, who has made misogynistic statements in the past.
Her reaction videos became popular when she put out one against a certain misogynistic exchange between the host and the guest of a television show called Annie’s Kitchen. Prapti also reacted to the content of a TikTok user called Viber Good, whose messages on relationships have been often criticised as toxic.
There is also a good dose of light-hearted videos on her feed. Prapti could suddenly be a language tutor telling you how to pronounce the various Malayalam food dishes.
But be it reactions, fake accents or sarcastic takes, her videos are flavoured with humour, with filmy bits and music merged into them. “I think I have a sense of humour and it helps to reach out to people,” Prapti says.