The last thing she did before Covid hit?

Well, she shot a music video in a couple of hours! Raja Kumari only knew she was leaving Mumbai for LA 24 hours earlier. She utilised that time in the way only she could – by shooting the video for her song, NRI. “I was getting my make-up done at 3am, and we started shooting at 6am on the lanes outside my Bandra apartment. I was done by 2pm and by 7pm I was at the airport,” she says.

around a part of her history with herself. “Jewellery is the best way to tell the story of our culture. And you can pass it down,” Raja Kumari says, confessing that she borrows jewellery from everyone, including her grandmother, whose ring she wears for our interview call. “It’s adorning yourself and an act of self-love.”

Another Raja Kumari signature is the bindi, which she introduced to her look as a conscious effort to stay connected with her past – her mother never took the bindi off though she switched from saris to Western clothes. Raja Kumari’s song, City Slums, which introduced the look, had 60.5 million impressions. Girls all over the world were wearing bindis and jhumkas and copying her expressions (yes, you do get a glimpse of Madhuri).

“I didn’t know being myself would cause such a revolution. I feel each girl is inspiring others to be bold, just like I did. That’s the sisterhood we need to build,” she says. “When I came to India, I kept saying I want to see more girls in the scene. People keep trying to convince us that there’s only one seat at the table for a woman and we all have to fight for it, while there are hundreds of men! Not if I have anything to do with it! Things are changing now. There are so many allwomen crews getting the job done. This is the era of the fall of patriarchy in India,” says Raja Kumari.

Make way for the queen! karishma.kuenzang@hindustantimes.com Follow @Kkuenzang on Twitter and Instagram