Instead, dressed simply in a T-shirt and jeans, sporting a make of shoes that are replaced when worn ad infinitum, Malhotra is as unassuming and modest a celebrity as you’ll ever encounter. “Listening to the music at my coffee shop in the hotel, the musical palate seems to have changed. Today, you can hear the same tunes here as in NYC. Music is interesting because people bring their own histories to the dance floor,” she says, as we settle down at Juhu’s Prithvi Café. Malhotra is delighted at the economy of the menu (“it’s Rs 250 for an omelet sandwich at the hotel”) and says that nothing in Mumbai is cheap any more.

Talk is cheap, however. Malhotra’s music exists in an alternative space, between the niche of electronic music and the commercial Bollywood bandwagon. It combines the folk traditions of Punjab with dance hall rhythms from Jamaica. Not many people see it that way. “Bhangra is still a red flag in many places. I’ve met the Talvin Singhs and State of Bengals of the world. I was introduced as ‘DJ Rekha, she does bhangra’. They take a step back, the attitude is like, ‘Oh, whatever’. The music has a baggage of being cheesy, but if you break it down, it has its own aesthetic and history,” she says.

Malhotra’s mother gave her the first taste of music from the farm land of Punjab. “My mum bought a bhangra cassette and years later, I heard a remix of the track and thought this was cool,” she says. The artist was also exposed to the Queen’s hip-hop scene, 20 minutes away from the Black suburban neighbourhood, where her family resided. In the mid-90s, however, bhangra was seen as cheap cab-driver music. “I was offended by that. There is a touch of self-hate in that attitude,” she says.