The contradictions and chaos of being Uorfi

“What if we are all computer simulations and what if life is actually a giant video game?” 

The question rings out in the middle of a soul-sapping shoot schedule for our reality series, Follow Kar Lo Yaar. Our protagonist is the internet’s obsession, Uorfi Javed. We are shooting her video diaries over the events of two episodes. Video diaries are crucial to the narrative of a reality show—this is the part where the audience gets into the head of the characters through straight-to-camera interviews. Uorfi does not like video diaries. You’ll notice she is supremely articulate otherwise, but low-key in her video diaries—it is her least favourite part of the shoot. She’d rather talk about the simulation hypothesis and other metaphysical theories. She even posted about it on her Instagram, and her 5 million followers treated the post with wonted indifference.

On the other hand, her sisters, Urusa, Asfi, and Dolly, who are also part of the show, love shooting video diaries; together they deliver zingers. Uorfi is pithy when talking about the drama in her life. She needs the occasional reminder to pump up the energy. She lapses into what her family and friends say she was while growing up and remains partly even today—quiet and introverted. But she is also, paradoxically, an exhibitionist—a person who has built her whole persona on aggressive attention baiting.

“I love being stared at. I love being papped,” she says on the show and off it. Uorfi revels in chaos and action—being a passive observer or narrator, even if it is of her own life, bores her. And that is why recounting what has gone past, as we do in video diaries, does not interest her. It is too static. She needs to be in the thick of the action, commandeering it to where she wants to take it. She doesn’t believe in the course of destiny, it is hers to hijack. Her ambition might swing between pragmatism to delulu, but it is what consumes and drives her.

I met Uorfi a year and a half ago for the first time when the show was in what we call the development phase. That point in the lifecycle of a TV series is when you are figuring out whether there is actually a compelling story to tell and sell. Contrary to what people believe, you cannot script a reality show—the characters and their world must be intrinsically interesting. You can and do amp up their lives and heighten key moments, but you cannot create a story if there isn’t one in the first place. 

When I walked into Uorfi’s rented flat in Mumbai for that first meeting, she was in the kitchen. Dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, deep-frying bhajiyas for us. It was an unexpected sight, completely at odds with what we see on her IG feed. “Don’t worry”, she announces, “I’m using olive oil. It’s very healthy”. I had my doubts about that, but after a three-hour-long chat over deep-fried potato and sugar-free vermicelli, there could be no doubt about Uorfi Javed. She was disarmingly self-aware, surprisingly introspective, and unabashedly ambitious. 

What was also deeply fascinating was her family and her origin story. While some of it was well-documented, there was much about her family that became revelatory. Each of the three sisters had a distinct personality, the brother wanted nothing to do with Uorfi’s world, and their mother was obsessed with a cat that had anxiety issues. They rooted Uorfi’s story in a world that was small-town (Lucknow), colourful, and chaotic. They were conservative, but dismissive of middle-class morality, which was of no benefit to them at their most helpless. It was a family torn apart and strangely bonded by shared trauma. Urusa, her older sister, told us in a research interview, “Of course, we are dysfunctional. Dysfunctional parents have screwed up kids.”  

Here was a reality series waiting to happen—quite unlike anything we had seen in this genre in India. The genre, incidentally, is called ‘follow reality’ and the defining show in this is Keeping Up With The Kardashians. Which is why, the minute a follow reality show is announced, Reddit declares it a rip off of KUWTK. It’s understandable. 

In Uorfi’s case, the Kardashian comparison is even more pronounced. She’s a Kim Kardashian fan and that is her publicly stated frame of reference. Add to that her squabbling siblings, who are not of the Austen or even Hilton variety. But the reason she makes for compelling reality TV is because while we may or may not live in a video game, Uorfi Javed has always lived in a reality show. There are no boundaries between her life and the series. 

She is not a version of herself, she is herself. The cameras are important, but also incidental. She is aware that she may not always be likeable, but she will not curb her natural impulses. She is large-hearted enough to pick up the bills for her family, but churlish enough to rub their noses in it. She nags the family like a tiger parent who aspires for much more. Fury drives her and she exposes it at its most manic. She goes into banshee mode with her managers over real and imagined slights. She will take extreme measures to retain her youth, but will also let the camera access her at her most unflattering—with a broken tooth, with no make-up on, and when she is slurring. 

If Follow Kar Lo Yaar is indeed the immersive binge watch that it’s being called, it is because of a protagonist who knows no fear. She is unafraid to be disliked and judged. She refuses to posture and will not spin a self-serving narrative of empowerment or female agency. Even on the contentious issue of her breast implants, she refuses to take the crowd-pleasing line of taking ownership over your body. “How will my decision to get bigger boobs empower other women?”, she asks in baffled bemusement. She is clear that her narrative and motivations are completely and totally about herself.

Ironically, Uorfi might just have become what she doesn’t seek to be—inspiring! A friend with a tween daughter told me, “I want her to watch Uorfi’s show.” I was a bit taken aback—this was not the target audience I had in mind. She explained, “I just want her to see women who are ambitious and don’t hold back.” And then it struck me, how the most maligned genre of television, reality shows, had done something that fiction series struggle with. It has given us a female protagonist who genuinely has no fucks to give, is ravenously ambitious, but most of all has you rooting for her. Thank you, Uorfi!

Naomi Datta is creative director on Follow Kar Lo Yaar, currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video