You know when you meet someone and within about thirty seconds you realise they are either going to become your new obsession or completely ruin your self-esteem because suddenly your own life feels aggressively beige in comparison? That was my day with BombayMami.

And I mean that with love.

The thing about her is that she doesn’t walk into a room like a celebrity. There’s none of that cold, overly media-trained energy where you feel like you’re speaking to a polished robot in expensive lip gloss. She walks in like a woman who genuinely enjoys life. Like someone who still gets excited by creativity and fashion and music and chaos and beautiful things and funny moments and people. Within minutes she’s laughing, moving things around, talking with her hands, making jokes, apologising for absolutely nothing, which honestly felt deeply aspirational.

At one point during the shoot she suddenly stopped, looked around the room at the clothes and cameras and lights and everyone buzzing around her and just went, “Look at this. I mean, this is all my little self has been dreaming of, honestly.”

And that line honestly stayed with me all day because there was something so pure about it. No pretending she’d always expected this. No fake nonchalance. Just this very human moment where you could actually see the little girl version of her sitting somewhere inside the woman she’s become, slightly stunned that her imagination turned into a real life.

I think that’s why she feels so magnetic actually. She hasn’t lost herself to the performance of being an artist. She still feels like a person first. A really funny one, by the way.

People online see the visuals first. The lehengas in the Alps. The styling. The insane beauty. The sensuality. The viral moments. But spending the day with her felt less like being around somebody trying to create an image and more like watching somebody who has accidentally turned their entire personality into art because they genuinely cannot help themselves.

Everything with her is a little cinematic. Even the way she tells stories.

When we started talking about her background, she explained being Swiss, Bengali and Tamil with this kind of emotional honesty that I think a lot of third culture kids will instantly understand. “You’re always in between,” she told me. “You’re not very Swiss but you’re also not very Indian. So it’s like, you just have to kind of create your own world and create your own little bubble and paradise.”

And honestly, I wanted to hug her a little bit after she said that because I think so many of us know exactly what that feeling is. Existing in this strange middle ground where every version of you feels slightly too much for one room and not enough for another. Too Western here. Too ethnic there. Too loud. Too emotional. Too sexy. Too opinionated. Too ambitious. Brown women spend half our lives being subtly told to edit ourselves into something more manageable.

BombayMami said absolutely not.

That’s genuinely her superpower.

Not confidence in the Instagram quote sense. Not fake self-love language. Actual freedom. The kind where you stop negotiating with yourself every five minutes about whether you are acceptable enough to exist loudly.

And trust me, she exists loudly. In the best possible way.

The funny thing is, I don’t even think she fully realises how refreshing she is because when we spoke about female empowerment she almost brushed it off. “I’m not even trying to portray it,” she shrugged. “I’m just doing it by being me.”

That hit me harder than any carefully crafted empowerment campaign ever could because she’s right. There is something unbelievably powerful about a brown woman simply refusing to shrink herself. Especially in a body that the world keeps telling women they’re supposed to apologise for before they are allowed to feel sexy or visible or glamorous.

And she does none of that apologising.

She wears clothes like joyfully taking up space is her birthright. She moves like she belongs everywhere. There’s no sense that she’s waiting to become thinner or smaller or more polished before she allows herself to fully live her life. Honestly, being around her made me realise how many women are postponing their own happiness until they become some imaginary improved version of themselves.

Meanwhile BombayMami is snowboarding down the Swiss Alps in a lehenga like a glamorous chaos demon sent to heal our inner child.

Speaking of that lehenga.

I asked her if she ever imagined Fire in Delhi would explode the way it did online because the visual genuinely broke people’s brains a little bit. Ten million views. A brown woman snowboarding in traditional clothing through the Alps looking like she’d wandered out of the world’s coolest fever dream.

And do you know what I loved most about her answer? She genuinely seemed surprised by the reaction. “I had the idea a long time ago,” she said casually. “I had this lehenga from my cousin’s wedding and snowboarded down this mountain in the Berner Oberland.”

Like excuse me? Imagine being so naturally iconic that you recount snowboarding in couture bridalwear with the same energy most of us use to describe popping into Boots.

I also asked if she was cold because frankly I would have been deceased halfway down the mountain.

“You know what? I wasn’t,” she laughed. “The sun was beaming.”

Of course it was. The weather itself was apparently collaborating with her aesthetic.

What I found fascinating though was hearing her talk about visuals because suddenly everything about her made sense. “For me visuals and music just belong together,” she explained. “Growing up I used to be obsessed with music videos. Missy Elliott’s videos, Busta Rhymes’ videos… they were just insane. That for me was always a dream to create.”

And you can tell.

Nothing she creates feels accidental. Every texture and frame and styling choice feels connected to some deeper emotional world she’s been building inside herself since childhood. But what I loved was that she still talks about creativity with excitement instead of strategy. You know how some people in creative industries start sounding like LinkedIn posts after a while? She hasn’t become that person. Thank God.

She still sounds like the girl who genuinely cannot believe she gets to make beautiful things for a living.

Half the interview descended into chaos, by the way, which only made me adore her more. Doors slamming. Everyone talking over each other. Her stopping halfway through answers because she didn’t think they sounded right. At one point she got herself into such a state laughing that she blurted out, “They’re gonna think I’m too stupid!” after making a joke mid-answer and honestly I nearly died.

That’s the thing nobody tells you about women like her. The coolest people are almost never trying hardest to be cool.

There’s an ease to her. A warmth. The kind that makes everybody around her relax into themselves a little bit more too.

Even the story behind her name felt so perfectly her. A sherwani from her mum, Air Force 1s, slicked-back hair, a spontaneous Instagram hashtag with her friend Angela. “What’s your favourite city in India?” her friend asked. Bombay. “People always thought I was Latino. Mommy. Bombay Mommy.”

Done. An icon was born through vibes and chaos.

And honestly, maybe that’s why she resonates so much right now. Because in a world where everybody feels curated and media-trained and filtered into oblivion, she still feels alive. She still feels like a woman with stories and contradictions and humour and insecurities and dreams and sex appeal and softness and ambition all existing at the same time.

You leave her presence wanting to live more boldly yourself.

You want to wear the dramatic outfit. Post the photo. Book the trip. Dance more. Stop obsessing over whether your body is acceptable enough to deserve joy. Stop editing your personality into something more digestible. Stop acting grateful just to be included in rooms you worked hard to enter.

Mostly though, you leave thinking the same thing I did.

God, I wish more women would allow themselves to become this free.

How to Channel Your Inner BombayMami (Chaotic Hot Girl Edition)

• Wear an outfit that causes at least one auntie emotional distress.
• Walk into rooms like you own property there, even if you’re just looking for the toilet.
• Mix cultures, aesthetics and vibes with absolute confidence. Gold jhumkas with Nike socks? Correct.
• Stop saying “sorry” every six minutes unless you have physically injured somebody.
• Romanticise your own life so aggressively that even your Tesco trip feels like a music video.
• Post the photo. Nobody is zooming into your upper arm except you and one deeply unhappy woman from school.
• Accept that being “too much” is often just code for “a woman with a personality”.
• Carry yourself like your ex still checks your Instagram stories from a fake account.
• Order dessert without performing a TED Talk about how “naughty” you’re being.
• If your outfit makes you slightly nervous, wear it immediately.
• Be spiritually evolved but still capable of sending a three-page voice note to your best friend analysing a man’s texting pattern.
• Dance like nobody’s watching. Then notice people are watching. Continue anyway.
• Stop waiting to lose weight before you start living your life. Nobody on their deathbed has ever whispered, “Thank God I skipped all those pool parties.”
• Become impossible to humble because you already humbled yourself by posting Facebook albums in 2011.
• Speak about yourself the way Punjabi mothers speak about their sons.
• Understand that confidence is mostly just surviving enough embarrassing moments that your nervous system gives up.
• Buy the dramatic coat. Your future self deserves main-character outerwear.
• Flirt with life a little bit. Wear the perfume. Book the holiday. Use the fancy crockery on a Tuesday.
• Stop acting like visibility is arrogance. Half the men on LinkedIn are posting blurry selfies with inspirational captions and sleeping peacefully at night.
• Learn the sacred art of not caring. Not in a nihilistic way. In a “I cannot spend my one precious life worrying whether somebody’s cousin thought I looked overdressed” way.
• Be hot, hydrated, emotionally layered and slightly delusional. It’s a winning combination.