Geeta’s Guide to Moving On
Geeta’s Guide to Moving On (2018)
Created, starring, written, produced, and directed by: Puja
In Geeta’s Guide to Moving On, Puja explores the universal theme of heartbreak and family from the perspective of an Indian-American woman. The 12-episode series, released in two parts, is among the most ambitious released in the early years of OTV.
When her first web series, Friendly Confines, lost its location and a key team member, Puja returned to work on her novel and solo show, A Great Dive. However, when she couldn’t find a theater to self-produce the play, she pivoted and produced her next web series instead, Geeta’s Guide To Moving On.
In this comedic series, Puja tells the story of Geeta who is dumped by her fiance. This happens quite early, and so the series focuses on the ways her friends and family, as well as dance, help her to regain a sense of self.
The roots of the show lie in Puja’s personal experience with heartbreak and the ways her culture both supported and challenged her healing.
“I created the show because I was going through a massive breakup, moved back in with my Indian parents, and realized that there was this inherent conflict because they didn't know how to navigate it because they had an arranged marriage and had never gone through a breakup or fallen in love,” she said in a post-screening conversation.
Puja filmed the series in stages, releasing three episodes on OTV and then going back to film an additional nine episodes a year later. Between the first three episodes and the last nine, she lost two key cast members. However, she continued the series, after re-casting the roles of Akua and Geeta’s Mom.
After the first 3 episodes, she thought she would look at the data and metrics to decide whether she would produce more episodes.
However, a few days after the OTV premiere, one of her team members asked her, “Would you regret it for the rest of your life if you didn’t make the rest?”
The answer for her was a resounding yes, and it was in that moment that she committed to completing the project. She never checked the metrics, and she still doesn’t know the data around her show.
Some of the cinematically satisfying scenes in the series are when Geeta dances to release her pain, a reflection of how the arts have shaped Puja’s experience.
“This web series is really a combination of everything that I do. I got into the arts as a dancer, I went to school for writing, and then I went back to school again for theater, for acting,” she said in an interview.
But by the far the breakout stars of the series – beyond Puja and Danielle Pinnock, who would later become known for the #HashtagBooked instagram sketch series and the hit TV series, Ghosts, on CBS– are the Aunties, who are played by Puja’s actual aunties. In the show they serve as a kind of Greek chorus, offering pearls of wisdom and occasional critique as spiritual guides on Geeta’s journey. When WGN-TV Chicago invited the project to appear on the show, it was the Aunties who were interviewed and featured. Puja rooted them on off-camera, so grateful that these immigrant women–the Aunties–had the microphone for the first time.
“In my life they're like the backbone of our families,” Puja said. “The CEOs of our families. The backbone of our community. And these women are so strong, and so resilient, and so wise; and yet in mainstream media I have not heard their voice.”
Instead, Puja sees more stereotypes of Indian and Brown people in media, disproportionately led by men and not women.
“I’ve heard the Indian cab driver, I’ve heard the South Asian terrorist. I’ve seen a lot of a men’s voices, but I haven't seen a lot of South Asian women’s voices on screen, particularly immigrant women. And they are so wise. They're actually, I feel, to me, the whole world, the whole family is so integrated into my understanding and vision of what America is.”
But these political concerns over representation are not Puja’s primary motivation, which is to tell stories about love and family that transcend identity lines. Her production company, Rainbow Productions, is anchored in the values of Love, Light, Laughs, and Seva, or Service. Rainbow Productions is dedicated to celebrating and amplifying lightworker narratives.
“As far as writing I would say, I will always write with comedy and heart. I want my work to live at the intersection of entertainment, education, and enlightenment.”