Janvi: Identity Has Nothing to Do With Your Profession (Literature & Learning Creator, Asst.Professor, 72k Followers)

Janvi Interview

"I wholeheartedly believe that this generation is soon going to be fed up with all this brainrot short form content. "

 

Q. How would you introduce Janvi beyond the Instagram grid and follower count?

I have never actually seen myself as an internet persona. Honestly speaking, content creation came into my life purely by coincidence, and a very happy one at that. But this life has always been much more than that. If i were to introduce myself, I would simply say that I am a girl who was never meant to make it so far in my life. 

Coming from a very small town in Rajasthan where the birth of a girl child was always treated like a sin and where girls were, for a very long time, not even allowed to get education or have a career of their own and were treated simply as a burden, it has always been my conscious effort to break all those shackles and become a woman of my own. So Janvi, at the end of the day, is just a girl fighting thousands of years of patriarchal customs and traditions simply to be able to live life on her own terms.

Q. You often write about books, poems, and introspection. In a time of short attention spans, why do you believe long-form thinking still matters?

I have always been intrigued by the world and the life that literature offers us all. After doing my Master's in English Literature, I realised that pursuing literature was simply in my destiny. I wholeheartedly believe that this generation is soon going to be fed up with all this brainrot short form content. We are already on our way towards realising that we, as audience and consumers of content, deserve better, and every time a person realises that, I believe that they will find themselves walking towards the world of literature.

Q. As a teacher and creator, what’s one idea about learning or self-growth that you think is commonly misunderstood today?

There are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to my profession. People used to mock me initially when I started making content, constantly telling me that as a teacher I should not be making content, that it would harm my ‘reputation’, my ‘identity’. This year, I have learned that all these are just stereotypical ways of society to restrict you. 

Identity has nothing to do with your profession, but it has a lot to do with how you use the platform that you have been given. If you are an honest person who simply wants to live their life on their terms while also constantly utilising their potential to the fullest, then the same people who used to shame you or mock you would one day find their way to you, asking you how you are able to do it all. 

There’s this fig tree analogy, you will find it in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, where the protagonist says (and I paraphrase) that she spent most of her life procrastinating, thinking that she had so much potential and she wanted to do so many things, but then she couldn’t because she could never make up her mind. Well, I have simply made up my mind, i am not going to let the fig tree haunt me, I am going to make sure that I become everything that I have the potential to become and more.

Q. Many young women relate deeply to your words. Do you feel a sense of responsibility knowing your thoughts influence how others reflect on their own lives?

The term ‘influencer’ is thrown around a lot today. I don’t know if I belong to that category or even if I have it in me to touch someone’s life so closely. But I do get messages from young girls every now and then, telling me that I inspire them and reading those messages, it overwhelms me. 

Knowing that there are people out there watching me, being inspired by me. So in a way, yes, there is a responsibility, but more than that, there is immense inspiration in this knowledge. Every time I receive such messages, it just fuels me with the courage to be a better version of myself and build a life that’s worth inspiring.

Q. If your Instagram were a book, what would its genre be and what would the opening line sound like?

If my Instagram were a book, I think it would be this weird pastiche of genres like dark academia, soft girl core, the eldest daughter grief and a coming of age narrative where the protagonist makes it out alive and strives to live a beautiful life after all the suffering. The opening line, I think, would be-

‘She was free, for the first time ever in her life and this is the story of how she found her way to that freedom’.

Bio

Janvi is a Bombay-based Assistant Professor and digital creator whose content lives at the intersection of literature, learning, and lived experience. Known for her thoughtful reflections on books, poetry, and city life, she uses social media as an extension of the classroom inviting conversations around slowness, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence in the digital age.

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Interviewed By Tarunanshi Sharma