What happens if she decides to visit India?

Larissa Nery, the 28-year-old Brazilian hairdresser whose innocent 2017 selfie sparked a national voter fraud scandal in Haryana, which LoP Rahul Gandhi popularised, touched down at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport today. What was supposed to be a low-key fact-finding trip to "see the craziness for myself," as Nery quipped to reporters, has exploded into a full-throated red-carpet rampage. Forget fake voter IDs; Larissa's now collecting real ones – for A-list parties, endorsement deals, and enough masala chai to drown a thousand deepfakes.

A bleary-eyed Nery, still jet-lagged from her 20-hour flight via São Paulo and Dubai, emerges from arrivals in – irony alert – a blue denim jacket not unlike the one that immortalized her as "Seema," "Sweety," and 20 other phantom Haryana housewives. She's mobbed not by election officials with subpoenas, but by a swarm of paparazzi, influencers, and one particularly enthusiastic auntie thrusting a garland of marigolds around her neck. "Larissa ji! One selfie for my WhatsApp group!" screams a middle-aged uncle in a safari suit, while a drone overhead live streams the chaos to 2.3 million viewers on Instagram Live. Rahul Gandhi, who first outed her pixelated plight last week, sends a welcome tweet: "From fraud to fame – welcome to India, Larissa! Let's audit those endorsements next." The BJP's IT cell, ever the witty underdogs, fires back with a meme of Nery voting for "Best Newcomer" at the Filmfare Awards.

By noon, the corporate vultures descend. Tata Group, never ones to miss a viral bandwagon, whisks her away in a Nano hybrid for a "strategic brunch" at the Taj Mahal Palace. Over idli-sambhar and a PowerPoint presentation titled "From Unsplash to Unstoppable: Monetizing Your Meme Moment," executives pitch her as the face of their new "Vote for Change" electric scooter line. "Think about it," purrs a slick ad man in aviators. "You're already in 25 lakh households – virtually! We'll slap your face on billboards from Delhi to Dharavi. Slogan: 'Larissa's Ride: No Fakes, Just Sparks!'" Nery, sipping filter coffee and blinking like a deer in Diwali fireworks, nods politely. "In Brazil, I cut hair. Here, they want to cut cheques? Okay, but can I keep the scooter? My old Vespa thinks it's a fraud too."

Word spreads faster than a WhatsApp forward about free ration cards. By evening, Bollywood's glitterati roll out the velvet rope. Karan Johar, the auteur behind more family dramas than India has joint families, hosts an impromptu "Larissa Launch" bash at his Juhu bungalow. "Darling, your eyes scream 'item number'!" he gushes, draping her in a designer sari embroidered with tiny ballot boxes. Shah Rukh Khan, ever the king of comebacks, FaceTimes in from his London shoot: "Larissa, beta, in India, every controversy is a love story. 

Yours? It's DDLJ meets Delhi Belly – a fake romance with real rupee returns!" Whispers swirl of a biopic: Blue Denim Ballot: The Larissa Chronicles, with Deepika Padukone as a glamorous Gandhi ally and Akshay Kumar as the bumbling BJP booth agent who downloaded the wrong JPEG.

The real jackpot? Brand ambassadorships raining down like unseasonal monsoons. L'Oréal India, sensing a follicular goldmine, offers $500,000 to hawk their "No More Deepfake Roots" hair dye line – "Because even stock photos deserve a fresh vote of confidence." Denim giant Levi's jumps in with a seven-figure deal for "Larissa Blue: The Jacket That Voted Itself Famous." And in a stroke of satirical genius, Paytm launches "Larissa Pay: Scan to Verify – No Ghosts in Your Wallet." Even the Election Commission, red-faced but ever opportunistic, floats a quirky PSA gig: "Be Larissa-Like: Real Faces Only." Nery, now sporting temporary henna tattoos of the Indian flag intertwined with her Unsplash watermark, laughs it off in a hasty presser. "I came to yell about my stolen face, but now everyone's stealing my time for selfies. It's like, in Minas Gerais, I trim split ends. Here, they're splitting crores!"

Not everyone's toasting with thandai. Back in Haryana, the Rai constituency – where her photo clinched a 4,673-vote squeaker for the BJP – simmers with satirical side-eye. Local cartoonists depict Nery as a sari-clad superhero battling "Phantom Voters" with a blow dryer. BJP spokesperson Amit Malviya, who once quipped she'd attended a "vote carnival," now pivots: "See? Our democracy is so vibrant, even Brazilian hairdressers get IIM invites!" Indeed, the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad has slotted her for a guest lecture on "Digital Doppelgangers: From Stock Shots to Stakeholder Shots." Opposition voices, meanwhile, milk the moment: Priyanka Gandhi Vadra tweets a Photoshopped image of Nery atop an elephant, captioned "Riding the Wave of Wrong – Time for Electoral Reforms, Not Red Carpets."

As night falls on Marine Drive, Nery slips into her first red-carpet premiere: a docu-satire called Faked It Till She Made It. Flanked by Aishwarya Rai (who bonds over "global glow-ups") and a gaggle of starlets eyeing her "exotic fraud glow," she waves to fans chanting "La-ris-sa! La-ris-sa!" like it's the new "Jai Ho." Millions? Try multi-millions by week's end, with agents haggling over a Netflix special: Larissa in Lalaland. "I thought India was the land of snakes and spices," she confesses to a trailing BBC crew, munching pav bhaji. "Turns out it's the land of checks and balances – mostly the cheque kind."

In this absurd Indian odyssey, Nery's saga skewers the republic's peculiar alchemy: Turn outrage into opportunity, scandal into samosas. Voter fraud exposed a glitch in the matrix; her visit hacks the hype machine. Will she extend her stay? "Maybe," she shrugs, eyeing a script for Haryana Hair-raiser. "But if I see one more fake me on a hoarding, I'm voting with my feet – straight back to Brazil." Until then, India salutes its newest import: The woman who didn't cast a vote but conquered the vote-bank of vanity. Namaste, notoriety.