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If you set out to change the world, where do you even begin?
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Some might start by changing themselves, be the change you want to see.
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But that has a limited impact on the world.
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To make a bigger difference, you need to change the views of others, be an activist even.
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Maybe you do this by writing op-eds in columns.
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Maybe you do murchas on the streets.
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Maybe you become a mover and shaker in politics to shake things up.
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If you really care, then over time you figure out those small ways in which you can help
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bring about big change.
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My guest on the show today thought long and hard about how he could help change the world.
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Fired up by deep emotion, he forced the road ahead with cold logic.
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Can there be a better combination?
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
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Please welcome your host, Amit Bharman.
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen.
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My guest today is Parmesh Shahani, founder of the famous Godrej India Culture Lab and
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an advocate of LGBTQ inclusion in corporate India.
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Yes, that's right, in corporate India.
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Even as Indian society changes slowly, Parmesh works with corporates to help make them friendlier
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and more open spaces for LGBTQ people.
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He's written a fabulous book about this called Tweristan, which he describes as memoir plus
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I was delighted to have him on The Seen and the Unseen to share his thoughts with me.
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Before we move on to our conversation though, let's take a quick commercial break.
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If you enjoy listening to The Seen and the Unseen, you can play a part in keeping the
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The Seen and the Unseen has been a labor of love for me.
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I've enjoyed putting together many stimulating conversations, expanding my brain and my universe
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and hopefully yours as well.
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But while the work has been its own reward, I don't actually make much money off the show.
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Although The Seen and the Unseen has great numbers, advertisers haven't really woken
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up to the insane engagement level of podcasts and I do many, many hours of deep research
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for each episode besides all the logistics of producing the show myself, scheduling guests,
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booking studios, paying technicians, the travel and so on.
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So well, I'm trying a new way of keeping this thing going and that involves you.
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My proposition for you is this, for every episode of The Seen and the Unseen that you
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enjoy, buy me a cup of coffee or even a lavish lunch, whatever you feel is worth.
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You can do this by heading over to sceneunseen.in slash support and contributing an amount of
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The Seen and the Unseen will continue to be free on all podcasts, apps and at sceneunseen.in.
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This is just a gesture of appreciation.
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Help keep this thing going sceneunseen.in slash support.
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Parmesh, welcome to The Seen and the Unseen.
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I'm very happy to be here.
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I remember we were at TED in 2009, that evening in Mysore, music, happiness, so much possibility.
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Did you imagine 11 years later, here we would be?
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What's kind of fascinating is that, you know, just for the listeners, we were both TED India
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fellows when TED happened in Mysore in 2009, the actual TED, not some TEDx.
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And Parmesh and I were both TED India fellows.
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The interesting thing is that for me, it was just an event, it came and it went and it
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was nice to meet all these people, but I didn't think much about it.
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But reading your book, I sort of realized that it's played a slightly more important
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role in your journey than in mine, which is, you know, so interesting to me how, you know,
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the same event can have such a different impact on people.
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You know, you've described your book at the start as a memoir plus manifesto.
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And it kind of seemed to me that even the manifesto part of it in a sense is it's almost
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So that's also in a sense, it arises out of the memoir.
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And I'd like to sort of before we get to your book, which I really enjoyed reading and learned
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from, but before we get there, I'd like to kind of explore the memoir part a bit and,
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you know, ask you more about your personal journey and how that's been.
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So tell me a bit about that, about, you know, growing up as a middle-class kid, first in
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Colaba, then you went to the Middle East, coming back to Bombay, navigating all of that.
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Tell me a bit about that.
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So yeah, it was interesting to reflect, to look back in the book.
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The aim was always, I think with both my books, right, Gay Bombay that came out first, Gay
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Bombay actually was the book that got me into that dead India, because the book had come
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out in 2008 and I applied using that and, you know, I got to come to this conference
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and like meet all of you, you know.
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So even there, even that book, which was very much an ethnography, that was an academic
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book that came out of my MIT program, that came out of research.
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So it was digital ethnography, it was anthropology, it was LGBTQ studies, it was so many of those
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And then over there, I kind of had placed myself in the middle of all the stories I
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And this format actually comes very much from my schooling and from my, not while growing
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up, but from my academic training.
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So the program that I did at MIT, for example, Comparative Media Studies, is something that
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Henry Jenkins, William Eurekio, these incredible scholars whom I love and admire so much began.
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And it was very much a program that kind of, I mean, you know, I want to use the word queer
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here, it queered media studies, because it kind of queered academia, not in the sense
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of talking about queers, which of course it does.
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Queer people, queer lives, queer hopes, also, how do you do academia?
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How do you tell stories?
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And that's also been the kind of change in anthropology over the years, right, from a
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researcher being someone who goes to a distant land to study the other, and, you know, lives
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in, immerses themselves into that culture and then writes up about it as a distant observer.
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Anthropology over the years, media studies, all these disciplines have become very much
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about the intimate, about what does it mean when you study your own self?
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What does it mean to reflect, you know, on your own journey while you are studying others
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like you, not others different from you?
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And what does that do to the research?
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So the method of Queeristan, which is deep, personal, mixed with facts, figures, data,
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other people's stories, was actually, I mean, I've honed it more in Queeristan, but you
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know, the initial experiment almost was Gay Bombay.
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And that came from my training, which also kind of validated.
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So one of the beautiful things about being in that program was, you know, my professors
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were like, your background matters, your experience matters.
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You know, we don't want to wipe out everything you are and where you've come from and train
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you to be a particular kind of scholar.
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We want you to inform your scholarship with all of these.
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And that was so amazing that, you know, and you know, Henry was an incredible mentor,
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And if you see his own scholarship, right, whether about comics or video games, or Star
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Wars, he actually started the field of fandom studies, you know, which now over the years
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has become, you know, a legit academic pursuit.
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He was like, it's all it's all about the personal, right?
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So that personal memoir meets manifesto thing has its origins, I mean, in my training, in
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the validation I got from my program that you can talk about, you know, you can reflect
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on your own journey, seriously.
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And I tried to do that for various reasons, because I thought it was also very, very important
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in queristan, which is a business book.
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And so many of the business books that I was reading or that I tried to read to prepare
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for this were just about business, or they just put you in and they said, you know, five
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things to do, six things to do case study here.
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I was yearning, I was thirsting to know more about the people behind those decisions, right?
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Why are you doing this?
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Why are you recommending I do these five things or like, why are you recommending I swim in
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Or do you know why you like, I kind of thought that it would be really nice to write a deeply
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personal business book.
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Because in a sense, what I was also trying to do in this book was to visible eyes, right?
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So large parts of the book, you know, cases, steps, etc.
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But really a large part of the book is, you know, for people who might not have met queer
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people, you know, this is us.
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This is our lives, right?
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This is my personal journey.
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This is what has happened to me when my family has accepted and my company has accepted.
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This is how my background has played into, you know, the privileges that I have, and
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that I can use at this point to kind of strategize in whatever way I can for, you know, to create
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a more inclusive playing field and things like this.
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I thought it was very important to put all those personal bits in even before we reach
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So a reader kind of knows me, they're like, ah, we understand this Parmesh, we understand
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not just where he's come from, but, you know, also all the other things in the book, right?
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So I thought that also kind of would open them up more to kind of have that empathy
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to understand the case and then to do which is what I really want them to do at the end
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of the book, which is implement those steps.
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So the personal putting that personal in was very strategic, and it has always been very
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strategic for me in both my books.
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It's very much a conscious act of creating that link of empathy with my readers so that
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they come with me on this journey.
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So I had a couple of observations, a second one sort of going into a question, and they're
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both kind of tangential.
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And one is that, firstly, I think that worked beautifully, the fusing of the personal with
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whatever the book is about.
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So it never felt like a business book that manifest to feel doesn't really come across.
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I mean, out of the five parts, you could say the fourth part is one which actually talks
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about what companies can do.
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And even there you've weaved in the personal, but it worked beautifully in the story.
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My second observation and also perhaps a question is that, you know, one of the other questions
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I had, which I first noted down before I even started reading the book that I want to ask
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Parmesh about, you know, when he was growing up, the process of getting comfortable in
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his own skin, which is hard for anyone, which was hard for me as well.
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So it doesn't matter what your sexuality or anything might be.
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All of us are so anxious about fitting into the world and just reaching that stage where
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we are comfortable with who we are is a journey in itself.
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But that seems to also have found a very interesting reflection in the voice of the book, where
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at first I was taken aback because, you know, there are so many places where, you know,
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and I always say with writers, I know that when you read something by them, because their
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writing is authentic, it sounds like you can hear their voice speaking out.
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And that's even more in your case, because, you know, somewhere you'll say, no, Baba,
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Or at the end of saying something, you know, you'll say Hannah, you know, and which was
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And, you know, the first couple of times it startled me a bit because you don't expect
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that kind of a conversational and formal tone in a book.
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So what was sort of, you know, is that something that you thought about that the voice has
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to be me and it has to be me to the extent that it has to be, you know, that process
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of people hearing your voice feels more explicit, you know, so is that something you thought
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Did your publisher have a problem and say, yeah, what is this, no, Baba, cut it out.
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And I hope she's listening to this and I hope she realizes how much people like it, because
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we didn't have many arguments through the book, but if there was one bone of contention,
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it was this, you know, for Westland, it was very much, Parmesh, this is a business book.
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You are not Shobha Day.
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And then I was like, oh, but I can be Shobha Gay.
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And I told Shobha also this, and they were like, no, no, no, no, no, you know, don't
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forget it's a business book.
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And I was very much, but it's my business book, darling, I think a business is different.
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So and that was the point.
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So we, if you read the, at some point, I think I should do a director's cut of the book with
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all the bits that were left out.
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If you see what was on the chopping table, it's essentially a whole bunch of this.
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They were like, okay, I love it.
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But I think maybe it's becoming too personal.
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Why we need to tell this?
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Why we have to say this?
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Can you every time not say, oh, this, this, this, and I was like, but you know, this is,
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so then we reached one, like any good editor, publisher, author relationship.
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And I see my auntie likes to say, it was all about compromise and adjustment.
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I was like, look, my voice is important.
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Here is what we are going to, I, you know, I think here, I want to talk like this.
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And they were like, okay, here is very good.
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But maybe here, if we make it a little more serious, a little more this or that, because
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remember it's ultimately a business book.
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So, but I'm glad that the voice came through because I was really afraid that, you know,
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I really wanted it to sound like me, which is why I also write recording the audible
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And I could just read it out because it's like, I, you know, thought of it.
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And if you read the audible version, it's exactly like that.
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It's like, I'm sitting next to you and taking you on this journey.
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I mean, the first time I came across some of those, and I think they're right there
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from the preface, I was, you know, with my editor's hat on, I was a little bit like,
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okay, this, this, you know, the reader will notice this, it snaps them out of the narrative.
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But as I went on, I found it a charming and be authentic to the person.
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So you feel that this is actually, you know, someone sitting across you and talking the
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way they talk, even if they don't know you.
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And I thought that really worked for me.
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So kind of getting back to your sort of the early part of your memoir, you know, what
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was it sort of like growing up in eighties, nineties, Mumbai, and, you know, in terms
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of you often said that you didn't have an issue with figuring out your sexuality, but
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So take me a bit through those years and what it was like.
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Yeah, it was, I mean, everyone is nostalgic about their past.
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And as you're saying eighties, nineties, I'm thinking of this Bappi Lehri album called
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I don't know if anyone else remembers it, but you know, I do.
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This is before Made in India.
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This is before pop music, right?
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And Bappi Lehri had released this incredible music album.
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I mean, a non-film music album called Habiba, which I still remember so much.
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And you know, we were not that rich.
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So you know, to get a cassette was something and how much I argued with my mom saying I
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And she was like, but you know, it's a cassette.
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You'll get tired of it because that was essentially it was Habiba multiple times.
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It was a single, but you know, it was, yeah, it was so different.
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I suppose every generation looks back at their childhood with wistfulness and, you know,
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with that sense of innocence.
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For me, it was also pre-internet India, right?
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So you know, access to information was not, was not very easy at all.
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And in my case, it was, I mean, you know, as I write in the book, it was a very, we
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lived in us and we were not, we were, we were middle-class, I suppose.
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We lived in a one-room house in Colaba.
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I went to St. Joseph's High School RC Church.
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I was in the greenhouse, the best house.
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And I used to go to school by BST.
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I mean, in those days, it was a big thing, you know, because in the moment Seventh Standard
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got over, you would wear long pants and you would say, I'm not taking the school bus because
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it was like a matter of pride to like take the BST and go to school by yourself.
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And I was always very, I mean, I suppose, and you know, I'm glad that you said that
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even it was a process of, you know, even how does one realize one's own straightness, right?
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I mean, it's not like, but I suppose if you're straight and you live in a heteronormative
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society, it's not a big thing.
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At some point, I suppose you realize that you are attracted and then you're comfortable
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with it because that's the way that everyone around you assumes that you will be in any
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But when you're queer, it's different, right?
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Because you live in a society which kind of expects one thing.
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But I never, I mean, I was always really very comfortable with me.
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It was an eighth, ninth, tenth that I became aware of the fact that I was, you know, emotionally
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and physically attracted to other boys.
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You know, I had a lovely boyfriend, I suppose, in school.
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Of course, we didn't use that term, we didn't know the term, but we knew that we didn't
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even know the term homosexual or gay.
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What we knew is that we liked each other and we enjoyed each other's company.
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And one thing led to the other and we were very comfortable.
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It seemed right, it seemed natural.
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And as I write in the book about how one day we were walking, holding hands, and again,
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it was boys could hold hands and walk.
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I mean, even I suppose today boys can, but like in those, I mean, we were very happy
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holding hands and walking together near the gateway.
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And one of the seniors, because I think I remember we were in the ninth standard and
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one of the seniors looked at us from school, he saw us and he was like, you both are homos
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And it was the first time we'd heard that word homos.
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So you know, we went back home and tried to do research and the next day in school he
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was like, you know, this homo is not a good thing.
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I don't think we should be homos.
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And I was like, I was actually quite relieved that there was a word.
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I was like, you know, it doesn't feel like a bad thing.
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And he was like, no, no, no, we should focus on our board exams because, you know, 10th
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standard is, you know, that's what you're obsessed with.
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And I found it very strange because, you know, I didn't think that there was anything wrong
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or something to be ashamed about, but he did.
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So he kind of recoiled.
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And I just remember, I mean, you know, it's, it was interesting.
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It was sad because I liked him very much.
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And, but for me, it was a good, I mean, it was always, I was always comfortable.
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So it's just that later on when you discover that, you know, okay, that's it's homo, that's
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You learn more, you read more, you understand more earlier, of course, I think, which is
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also why the current generation is so blessed because, you know, there are so many role
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models, stories, whether, you know, books, films, web series, websites that talk about
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being queer in an Indian context, whereas, but, you know, in the eighties, late eighties,
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early nineties, which is when I was in school growing up, I mean, there was, it was like,
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you had to like search for like, you know, maybe there will be a little clipping talking
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about boy George, or maybe there'll be a hint of Freddie Mercury, or maybe there will, you
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know, George Michael at some point will come out and it will be gasp, George Michael is
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gay, or, you know, it was that, right?
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We were, we were like, so even when you're comfortable, you want a context.
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And for me, I, you know, I, I wanted a context of being queer in a desi way, you know, all
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the foreign role models, etc, were nice, but you know, it didn't feel like my experience.
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And you know, which is also, I guess, why ultimately, when I went off to study further
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and all my first book was about what does it mean to be queer and Indian, it was largely
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about Indian-ness, about desi pun.
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So that's what it was growing up.
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It was about doldarshan and he-man and it was about, you know, different kinds of friendships.
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It was about long walks.
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It was about, I guess there were less distractions so I could, you know, spend time to read.
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I used to live with my grandparents.
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So one of the pleasures of my life was every evening going for a long walk with my grandfather.
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And he would expose me, he didn't, you know, he didn't study much.
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But he would go for like, you know, and of course, we were not rich.
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But we would go to Janki Raat Gallery every time a new show would open and we would look
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And I think that, so it was, it was formative years in terms of just understanding myself,
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feeling very comfortable with who I am.
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But of course, not being able to share this with my parents or grandparents or even friends
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I didn't know what to say, I didn't know how to articulate it.
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And then, you know, my dad got a job in the Middle East.
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And that was a very different kind of because in the 80s and 90s, you know, being a simple
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middle class kid, you know, and in India, where everything is prohibited, and then suddenly
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being able to go and it wasn't a great job, I mean, he was working in a supermarket, but
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it was, I mean, you know, to go on a plane to be able to actually buy Toblerone, to see
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a supermarket, all these things were quite exciting.
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So it was a way out of middle class mundaneness into this really exotic world of like, wow,
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And in fact, the phrase that you've used in your book for it is you've called it quote
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a journey out of middle class frugality to Toblerone heaven, a tangential sort of thought
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strikes me here that, you know, being, you know, someone who sort of grew up at the same
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And I just felt this wave of nostalgia when you just use the word cassettes, because,
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you know, it was such a big deal for us in those days to discover new music to somehow
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plan and scrape together a mixtape of the stuff you like and all of that.
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And equally, like you point out that, you know, it's almost difficult today to imagine
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a world without the internet as difficult as it would have been for us to imagine a
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world without electricity, maybe.
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And it kind of strikes me therefore that, like, do you think that the whole experience
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of growing up and discovering yourself is then becomes very different?
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Because like you pointed out, like, you know, you mentioned that you went on long walks
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And I'd imagine that if you're growing up today, you're not going on so many long walks
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with your grandfather, you because you're bombarded all the times by, you know, so much
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for your senses, by so much information, there is so much to discover.
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And on the one hand, of course, kids growing up today are just a luckier generation ever,
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because they have all this at their fingertips.
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But you know, is there something you think lost in the fact that they don't have that
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time and that space to sort of be with themselves and so on?
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I think so, for sure, and now, you know, I'm sounding like an uncle already.
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So everyone who's listening to this will say, sit down, uncle or shut up uncle or something.
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But I think I think there is something different from not being connected, right?
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So even now, I mean, you know, I go for walks with my partner, who happens to be younger
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than me, you know, different generation, and it's hard to walk for 10 minutes without
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him dipping out his phone and taking a picture for a future Instagram story.
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So and then he's like, you know, we have to think of the story also, I'm like, okay.
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So I think that is fundamentally different.
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But even with us, right?
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I mean, one is so attached to the gadget right now, one is so attached to the screen right
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So it's not just younger people, I think we've also fundamentally in some way, culturally
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and you know, physically, in terms of how we experience things change.
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But it has pros and cons, right?
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I mean, the pros is you have a lot of time, etc.
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The cons is when you're growing up in an economy, which is frugal, in a world where information
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is limited, it takes you a long time.
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So you know, my generation, our generation of people come out a lot later, people spend
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years and in my case, I didn't struggle with self acceptance, right?
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It was, I was comfortable, so many people in our generation torture themselves, you
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know, about whether what they are feeling or who they are, is normal or not.
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So many destroy their own lives and the lives of others by conforming either to the pressures
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of an arranged heterosexual marriage, and so many other things, right?
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So I think for today's, I mean, you know, for younger people for today's generation,
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I'm just so glad that there is an ecosystem built for those who can access it, so that
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they can learn, they can, you know, understand themselves, they can, you know, express themselves
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and they can imagine a better future for themselves in whichever way they wish, right?
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So I don't want to be too nostalgic and romanticize and say everything was good.
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I mean, in those days, of course, you know, it was our childhood, so it was good.
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But young people today have so much more access to, you know, to knowledge and opportunities
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and that's excellent as well.
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Yeah, and it struck me as kind of poignant and charming, but poignant also that you speak
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about how, you know, you watch Kayaamat Se Kayaamat Tak and then you made a fantasy out
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of it and called it Gayaamat Se Gayaamat Tak, where, you know, Aamir is romancing you instead
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of Juhi Chawla, which is charming, but it's also poignant because it sort of indicates
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what you were just speaking about, that the search for role models is so futile that you
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have to eventually find it in your own fantasies and yeah, and that we didn't have made in
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But you see a gay couple or four more shorts where you can see a lesbian wedding or whatever,
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So we had to interpolate ourselves into these stories and imagine that Sholay is a gay bromance
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and of course Jai and Veeru are gay and you know, that's true by the way, but because,
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you know, we didn't have my brother Nikhil or Aligarh or Iklarki or Shubh Mangal where,
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you know, it's very clear in the first 10 minutes that they're gay, there's a gay kiss
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and you know, then the story goes on.
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So yeah, we had to fantasize, we had to imagine, we had to...
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And you know, another thing that's kind of struck me in many different contexts is that,
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you know, being born a straight person in a heteronormative society as I am, my identity
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doesn't really play a big part in my life.
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I can take it for granted.
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I don't have to think about it, whereas if you're a woman or if you're gay or if you're
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any number of things, if you're Dalit, that identity is like an extra layer that you
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always have to be aware of and you carry it with you and it kind of factors into everything
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You know, was that sense of that extra layer strong in you?
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Was there a sense of frustration at kind of, you know, having to navigate the world with
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that, you know, that extra layer of awareness attached to it, which, you know, most people
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around you would not have to bother with?
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So Amit, here I would like to disagree.
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And I would like to say that I don't think he as a straight person, your identity does
#
not play a role or that you are not conscious about it.
#
In fact, a lot of good academic research now is coming up about straightness or whiteness
#
or, you know, all these things, which are the majority that you assume need not think
#
about themselves, need not have issues, need not be conscious, need not articulate themselves.
#
So straight people also articulate their straightness in different and unique ways.
#
And a lot of, in fact, I've been really toying with this idea of doing another book called
#
straightest time, where I understand straight people and immerse myself in their world and
#
just see what it's like.
#
What does it mean being straight?
#
How would you like when you were nine years old, growing up straight in India?
#
So I think a lot of us, you know, we, I think we're all conscious of the various facets
#
But certainly, and you live in a heteronormative, patriarchal, and in India, you know, a casteist
#
society, which is oriented towards certain things, when you happen to be the majority,
#
it's a luxury to imagine that you don't have to think about certain things, right?
#
So as you said, you know, when you feel you're not the majority, these things, you become
#
slightly more conscious of it.
#
So that's the thing, but I don't think, I mean, you know, I think if you're upper caste,
#
you are conscious, or you are aware, and your identity really frames everything that you
#
do, in the confidence you have, and how you physically navigate through space, how you
#
fill up a space, how you, you know, have just imagined that you have access to things, and
#
so on, in a way that someone who's not upper caste might not, same way with men, right?
#
And that's what's so interesting.
#
In fact, another Ted fellow, Jasmine Patija, you know, from that same 2009 conference has
#
done these incredible experiments with blank noise, where she and, you know, fellow artist
#
activists go to public spaces, and just see what it does to men, when they occupy those
#
spaces in a way that men do, you know, so for example, 10 women sit on a parapet, put
#
one leg up on a wall, spread themselves, because men tend to spread themselves.
#
And when men pass by these women, look at them and do, you know, or whatever, you know,
#
make noises, or when go and lie down in a park, and occupy that space in that sense,
#
In a way that, and then they record reactions of men, because men have never seen women,
#
in that sense, be comfortable together in a public park, or lying down, or it's very
#
strange for men to walk by and have a group of women maybe call them out, but it seems
#
very normal for the opposite to happen.
#
So I think, you know, when you're not in this, in the majority, then you are conscious of
#
that difference, for sure.
#
If you're a woman in India, you're conscious if you're, you know, if you're Dalit, if
#
you're queer, if you're Muslim, you would be conscious of how you navigate, you know,
#
the spaces, but also how you think of yourself, how you imagine, you know, a future for yourself,
#
how you negotiate, you know, various aspects of yourself.
#
So yeah, so certainly for me, my, while my queerness is not the only part of me that
#
I talk about, I mean, you know, I'm also Sindhi, and you know, and that comes out in so many
#
I love bling, of course, and so many other things, I mean, there's so many aspects of
#
But, you know, but certainly in, it's tough, these are aspects that I am conscious that
#
I would be slightly a little more conscious about.
#
But by that, I'm not saying that, you know, you are also conscious of your straightness
#
and the way you express it in different ways.
#
No, I mean, I don't dispute that.
#
And obviously, in the world we live in, straightness is itself an enormous privilege of a sort.
#
What I kind of meant was that, you know, let's say, for example, just to take the male female
#
context, if I want to go out for a walk at 11pm, I don't have to think twice.
#
If I get into, say, if I get into an elevator with five strangers, I don't have to be on
#
high alert and I don't have to have that extra layer of alertness, which women will naturally
#
have just because of the world that we unfortunately kind of live in.
#
But, you know, I sort of, by your point, the other question is, like you pointed out, and
#
you know, one of the things that, you know, through the book, you've spoken of how all
#
of us have many selves, and therefore can't just be sort of, you know, and that it's a
#
danger to be defined by one particular kind of identity.
#
And it struck me there that, you know, being gay in a heteronormative society where there
#
is so much discrimination and prejudice and all of that, when it is such a big deal, how
#
much then does that part of your identity sort of shape and define your life?
#
Like, supposing we lived in an entirely just society, where none of this existed, where
#
it was completely, where it was as normal to be gay as to be straight, as normal in
#
a sense, in the way of how society treats you and all that, you know, what direction
#
would your life then have taken?
#
It's kind of moved in these directions because, you know, you've been kind of driven by this
#
great cause at some level, maybe it begins with self-discovery, and then it goes on to
#
trying to make the world a better place.
#
But what if the world did not need to be made better in this way?
#
What would you be doing today?
#
Who would, you know, Parmeshani have been?
#
Would you still be in management at a top company?
#
Would there be any reason to be there?
#
Would you be maybe an artist or something?
#
I can still be all those other things too.
#
No, I think in my case, I've been, I've been really blessed and I talk about these multiple
#
privileges in the book as well as something that really, really pushed me to create, you
#
know, more fairer ecosystems for everyone.
#
But I've been blessed in the sense that I've had, you know, while I didn't grow up in wealth,
#
I've had like very supportive parents, you know, who could give me an education, you
#
know, at least in India until, you know, until college level.
#
And then, you know, when I went to the US, I got it on scholarship.
#
But to have that support, even in terms of sexuality, when I came out, it was easier
#
with my mom, my dad took some more time, but there was never a rejection.
#
And there was never that drama of like, you know, you become straight otherwise, or like
#
a lot of queer people go through real hell, there's no other word for it, they go through
#
torture by their own parents and families, whether it is things like conversion therapy,
#
which is sickening, that it's still happening, whether it is forced heterosexual marriage,
#
all the way up to people to people's own families, torturing their own children, killing them,
#
So all that happens in our country, not just if you're queer, but if you're different in
#
So given that range of horrible things that might have happened, I think, you know, to
#
have, you know, parents who love and understand you is the biggest blessing and the biggest
#
privilege, which is why a lot of my book, where it's done is about this, about this
#
parental gaze and this parental framework as something that is so vital.
#
I've had schools and colleges which have, you know, been in different levels supportive.
#
I've been blessed with workplaces of, you know, different kinds, which have, even if
#
they've not been supportive, they've not been overtly discriminatory.
#
And these are all blessings.
#
And you know, whether it's having academic, you know, the, the fortune of going to a place
#
like MIT or like, you know, doing classes at places like Yale and all of that, which
#
has like opened my mind up to not just possibilities, but also networks of like just amazing, inspiring
#
Some of whom I write about in the book, right?
#
People like Emma Catrada, who unfortunately is no more, who shared, who was in the next
#
cell of Nelson Mandela on Robin Island, and who spoke to me about hope and forgiveness
#
So so many people, right, Assam Dawood, who is doing incredible work on refugees in Israel
#
And there's so many incredible people whom I've met through this, you know, through my
#
So I think I would have been doing exactly this because, you know, I don't think I would
#
have been doing anything different had we been living in a, you know, in a more heteronormative.
#
I think I would have been working on the different things that interest me.
#
I would have been trying to connect them together.
#
And in a way, this is where I'm going to even now because, you know, one of my realizations
#
over the past 10 years and in between the two books has been very much about intersectionality.
#
This is something that I've learned completely from the young people that I've been lucky
#
enough to hang out with and learn my own team members.
#
So many of the people that you encounter in the book, whether it's Professor Dhirin Borissa
#
from OP Jindal, whether it's Grace Banu, who's an incredible trans rights activist from Tuticorin
#
in Tamil Nadu, whether it's Rafiul who runs the Queer Muslim Project, whether it's Aro
#
who along with an incredible team run Dalit Queer Project, and people whom I haven't met,
#
whether it's Greta Tharberg or others, right, all around the world are trying to create
#
or Malala or so many other of these inspiring people around the world who are just trying
#
to create a better world in terms of environment, gender, and so on.
#
Even my own learning over the past 10 years has been that if you care about queer rights
#
and queer inclusion, like I do, you really have to contextualize these in the context
#
of other movements for social change and social justice.
#
And you really need to, in a sense, build bridges of solidarity with others because
#
we can't say that you want a more better world for queer people only and not recognize that
#
the struggle is linked to the anti-caste movement or the movement for a better, cleaner environment
#
or Black Lives Matters in the US or other parts of the world and so many other social
#
justice movements which are happening all over the world, all powered by young people.
#
So my thinking also has grown because of the people I've encountered and met into realizing
#
the intersectional nature of the struggle, that's one.
#
And the other is in realizing that the interconnected nature of what the solution might be.
#
So a lot of Queeristan, the book itself talks about the fact that we live in a world where
#
companies, NGOs, different governments, national, state, municipal, will have to come together
#
in different ways, in different formations to solve some of these issues.
#
Because the challenges are not something that any one of these stakeholders will be able
#
to do by themselves, right?
#
So this is where my mind is moving towards more and more, how do we create, they need
#
to be tight networks of collaboration, they could be loose for certain projects or things
#
as we saw post-COVID for example, we saw companies come forward and give money and resources,
#
we saw incredible NGOs come together and organize relief, we saw state governments that got
#
into action and help and empowered things like that, which is why, I mean, some of the
#
So I think a lot of the future is going to be about this and my thinking is that I would
#
be, I would have anyway been on this track, even otherwise.
#
Now I'm more and more on just thinking about what would it mean to build these other kinds
#
of connections, these other kinds of solidarities and move ahead.
#
And I've completely rambled, but yours is a long form podcast, so that's wonderful.
#
Yeah, you know, rambling here is a feature, not a bug, that's what the listeners kind
#
There are sort of, you know, some fascinating strands in what you just said and one of course
#
is, you know, you mentioned Amit Katrada, who was, you know, Mandela's cellmate, and
#
you recount this fascinating bit in your book where he was showing you around the cell block
#
where the two of them were housed.
#
And the part that really jumped out at me over there is about how he was talking about,
#
you know, it took us 10 years of agitation to be allowed to read newspapers and 15 years
#
of agitation to sort of be allowed pen and paper or whatever, and, you know, those were
#
the kind of time spans that you're talking about, where you just keep trying, you don't
#
know if it will happen in your own lifetime, and you make incremental progress at 10 year
#
and five year chunks, whereas, you know, in these modern times, perhaps, that's vastly
#
accelerated by, you know, social media and globalization, would you say that's the case
#
like I'm, there's one passage in your book also that kind of struck me, which is about
#
the impact of liberalization on the gay movement, where at one point you write Alkotiaward's
#
quote, consider the designer Jenjum Gadi, who hails from Tirbin, a remote village in
#
Arunachal Pradesh, electricity came to his village only in the late 1990s, he stumbled
#
upon fashion while going through old issues of feminine, imagine the journey of transportation
#
from the northeast to Delhi, possibly because of new post liberalization air routes of education
#
at Wigan and Lay College, possible because a post 1990s needed new kinds of colleges
#
of internship with Rohit Bal, the legend who attended Jenjum's graduation at which he won
#
Best Designer of his debut Fashion Week presentation, possible because there was now a network of
#
such biannual shows offering visibility to young talent and of sales, again, this post
#
liberalization India had created a new customer base, eager to consume fashion, stop code.
#
And this is again, sort of tangential, but it strikes me that in a lot of activism, especially
#
left wing activism, you know, free markets and capitalism are often given such a bad
#
Well, the way I kind of look at markets is that markets are the way by which a society
#
fulfills its own needs, you know, voluntary actions in the about so to say.
#
And this is also something that you seem to have embraced because rather than sort of
#
work in a dusty NGO and work in villages in the bilanes of towns, one of the things that
#
you do is, you know, work within a company, work with corporates to actually make things
#
So in this one aspect, you seem to have a more optimistic view than, you know, many
#
Is this something that you've thought about or is this something that you, you know, that
#
you evolved towards or did you always sort of disagree with the demonization of markets
#
and evil capitalists and so on?
#
No, I don't disagree with the demonization of markets and evil capitalism.
#
There is a lot of merit in the criticism of capitalism.
#
And we are seeing, we have seen it in the past few years, right?
#
Piketty has written about this, as have so many others, whether it's, you know, Amartya
#
Sen, Jean Drez in India and so many others, about, you know, how inequality and even,
#
you know, Abhijit and Esther, right, you know, who work so much on poverty, right?
#
So clearly our world is becoming more and more unequal.
#
And you know, one of the perils of capitalism is that it has been widening inequalities
#
and that has been terrible.
#
Capitalism has been, is good in so many ways, right?
#
And in that passage that you read out, it shows you the liberating, you know, both in
#
an imaginative and in a really, in an economic sense, power of capitalism, say for young
#
gentrum and the leap that gentrum has been able to make.
#
But in so many other cases, and you know, that's, I mean, that's been, that's great.
#
But in so many other cases, certainly, I mean, you know, capitalism has led to a widening
#
And so I think it's really time to reimagine capitalism, really look at this inequality
#
and figure out how to, you know, stem it, stop it, reduce it, cannot continue like this
#
Can I interject and sort of make a larger point about economic inequality, which I keep
#
making is that I think people who worry about economic inequality commit what I call the
#
zero-sum fallacy, where they assume that there is a fixed amount of money in the world, and
#
therefore inequality is bad because of the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.
#
Obviously, in a zero-sum world, more inequality would mean more poverty.
#
But what happens in developing countries and what has certainly happened in India over
#
the last, you know, 30 years is that inequality has grown as poverty has declined because
#
we're not in a zero-sum world.
#
Every voluntary transaction leaves both people better off.
#
So what you've, you know, the post-liberalization estimates say there have been some 300 million
#
people come out of poverty, which to me is a moral triumph, because poverty is, to me,
#
India's biggest problem.
#
And you know, the solutions for poverty and inequality are very different.
#
You could solve inequality in a flash by making everybody equally poor.
#
And I kind of go by what Harry Frankfurt calls the doctrine of sufficiency.
#
Harry Frankfurt is a philosopher who's written this great book called On Inequality, and
#
he's also written a fabulous book called On Bullshit, which kind of describes a lot of
#
what comes out of Trump and Modi these days.
#
But the phrase that he coins is a doctrine of sufficiency, where he says that what is
#
important is to go by, you know, how absolute levels of poverty are, that the doctrine of
#
sufficiency essentially states, and I'm obviously paraphrasing here because it's from memory,
#
that everyone should have enough to kind of whatever suffices to live a good life at least.
#
And therefore, you know, I think a lot of our dialogue about inequality doesn't take
#
It assumes that there is a zero-sum world.
#
But the point is that as poverty declines, inequality will go up, and in fact in India
#
But the larger issue of the zero-sum fallacy, and I'm just thinking aloud here, it seems
#
to me can also, you know, crop up in certain kinds of activism, where, you know, the way I see it
#
is that I would love all individuals to be empowered and have the same kind of opportunities
#
and we can all grow together.
#
And yet there is a sense in some kinds of dialogue and some kinds of discourse that,
#
you know, people with X identity are enemies of people with Y identity, and it almost has
#
a feel of a zero-sum game that, you know, X oppressed us for centuries, or X broke our
#
temple and made a mosque, or whatever, it can come from either the right or the left.
#
And therefore, as Y, we must stand up and take revenge, which again sort of to me seems
#
to be stuck in that kind of mindset.
#
This is not really leading to a question, but since you kind of brought it up, I thought
#
it's, I'll just kind of state this count of you.
#
Yeah, no, I agree completely with you that zero-sum games are, you know, are limiting,
#
which is why this, you know, the book is very much about win-win scenarios and across everyone,
#
which is also why the book has a range of individuals across the spectrum in it.
#
It's an inclusive book in the sense that it has people who might be right leaning, it
#
has people who might be left leaning, it has people who are centrist.
#
And to get back to your question earlier about a tension, say, between activism and capitalism
#
in that sense, I actually think, I don't think of it as oppositional.
#
I think a lot of the work that we are doing, and we need to acknowledge it, a lot of the
#
work that we are doing in the corporate world, for example, is built on years and years of
#
labor of our activist friends.
#
And I think it's vital to acknowledge the fact that all this work is being built upon
#
it and it continues to be built upon it, right?
#
So whether it is NGOs who have struggled for years, whether it is activists who came out
#
since from the 70s onwards and paved the way for, you know, this generation to do the kind
#
of work that it's doing, whether it's the lawyers who fought everyone, you know, there
#
are so many cases from the 90s onwards.
#
And you know, people remember the 2018 victory.
#
But you know, there were lawyers who were involved in 2013 2009, even before that, right?
#
So I actually think, I don't think of it as oppositional at all.
#
I think, you know, I think of it as, as a universe in which we all are doing whatever
#
we can, wherever we can.
#
So I situated myself in the corporate world, because I could, because I also felt that
#
there was a need for someone like me, who is able to, in a sense, shape, shift and translate.
#
And I felt that my work would be more useful from a corporate world, because even with
#
the toehold that I have, like, I don't have power in the corporate world, honestly, I
#
But I have a toehold of influence.
#
So how can I use that position to put that toe in kind of widen, open a door, you know,
#
first at Godrej, and then, you know, hopefully in other companies, and say, let's talk about
#
this, let's do this, let's do this, right?
#
There's no way that I could be that I would be successful at doing all of the work that
#
I've been doing, actually, if it was not for my activist friends on the ground, who are
#
actually doing the real heavy lifting.
#
If it was not for my academic friends in universities, who are questioning, who are pushing, who
#
are countering, who are reflecting.
#
So I think we have to stop thinking of these spaces as oppositional, and instead think
#
What we should also stop thinking of them as silos, silos from which we cannot share,
#
connect, interact, disagree with each other, but hopefully ultimately be productive in
#
the kind of world building that we want to engage in.
#
And I learned this from Sir Ian McKellen, who when he visited Bombay some years ago,
#
younger viewers of this podcast might know him as Gandalf and Magneto.
#
For the older listeners, it would be the famous Shakespearean actor, Sir Ian McKellen.
#
And you know, Ian is Ian for me, Sir Ian for all of you all, because he's my friend.
#
Yeah, Magneto is my friend, all of you all must be so jealous.
#
This is why you're so magnetic.
#
And he said that, right?
#
So Ian is also he started Stonewall, which is this incredible queer rights NGO based
#
And he actually told me, he said, look, Parmesh, I've been doing this for years.
#
And we all, I mean, my realization is that we are all needed, right?
#
We need our activist friends on the streets to push for change.
#
We need people in academia to imagine new worlds and to teach generations of people
#
about these new worlds.
#
But we need people like you and me who can, you know, maybe wear a business suit, go to
#
the businesses, go to the politicians, talk to them and say, look, there's a new world
#
How do we work together?
#
And he said, we all need to do our role.
#
And to imagine that, you know, just one of us is going to bring about change would be
#
That's the whole system.
#
Now, my point in this whole book is to recognize that there's an ecosystem and to recognize
#
that, you know, there are multiple spaces where change is happening, but also to help
#
correct some of those things.
#
I think even within the queer movement, right, there is a genuine dissatisfaction that, you
#
know, gay men tend to do a lot of the talking and tend to get a lot of the credit.
#
So I've written this book being very conscious that I'm a gay person, that I'm a gay man
#
How does one use these projects to create platforms and amplify other voices which are,
#
you know, within the movements, which have been, you know, fundamental in helping shape
#
the movement, but because of structure or so many other things not been heard.
#
So how do we foreground or create platforms to forefront trans voices, lesbian voices
#
and ballot voices, you know, so many of these other things is also something that I've been
#
very, very conscious of in this process.
#
One of the sort of things that I found profoundly impressive about the work that you've done
#
and Sir Ian has done, I can't call him Ian, that Sir Ian has done and almost all the people
#
whose stories you've related in your book have done comes from sort of a common, you
#
know, bypasses a common complaint that I often have about how liberals in India have approached,
#
you know, their idea of India, where, you know, one of the themes, which is almost a
#
cliche on this podcast, which I'll often ask guests when I'm talking about political philosophy
#
and so on, is what we seem to have done in 1950 is a bunch of liberal elites imposed
#
relatively liberal constitution, not as liberal as I'd like, but a relatively liberal constitution
#
on an illiberal society and but we couldn't see those ideas within society itself.
#
And what has happened today is that if you look at our politics, you know, our politics
#
has caught up with our culture, you know, Andrew Breitbart once said that politics is
#
So it kind of strikes me that if you want to affect true change, it's difficult to do
#
In fact, it simply will not work.
#
It has to go the other way.
#
And that's much harder.
#
You know, it's much easier to, you know, try to get the state to do things in a top down
#
It's far harder to get into the culture because then it takes years, if not decades for these
#
ideas to sort of percolate through because you want the culture to change.
#
You want, you know, LGBTQ people to be accepted, not because there is a law which says you
#
shall not discriminate, but because people accept it from their hearts.
#
And I think, you know, one of the things that does make me hopeful, despite the way our
#
politics is going, is that, you know, to paraphrase Martin Luther King, the arc of history seems
#
to be bending towards inclusion in the sense that, you know, I remember when in 2018 when
#
the judgment happened where 377 was outlawed once again.
#
And I thought to myself that if this had happened in 1988, there would be so many voices raised
#
And, you know, I can't recall, you know, apart from people on the fringes, anybody really
#
against that sort of wonderful judgment in 2018.
#
So on the one hand, it seems to me that, you know, for a variety of reasons, maybe openness
#
to global influences and social media and all that, you know, society has changed and
#
become more tolerant and all of that, at least in the specific context.
#
But the other sort of interesting aspect that I really liked and admired is that, you know,
#
what you're trying to do in your case in the context of corporates, but also other contexts
#
like you do with the Goodrich Culture Lab is bring this bottom up change in the culture.
#
Is this something that you've kind of thought about, you know, was there a conscious understanding
#
that this is how we need to do it or did things just happen along the way?
#
Yeah, so I try and do both.
#
And, you know, I don't know how much of say the work through the lab is bottoms up, because,
#
you know, there's so much we're just one of the multiple spaces in, you know, Mumbai and
#
then the country, which hosts and different kinds of conversations.
#
It's certainly an attempt to platform and amplify a range of voices, which are all talking
#
about contemporary India.
#
And over the years, I think we've, you know, based on different themes, I think we've been
#
able to showcase, you know, incredible individuals to arrange of different formats as well, physical,
#
mostly physical events, but now shifting to online.
#
So yeah, that's been very, very good.
#
But I also think that it is a combination again, it's not because I think at least in
#
the corporate world, I'm very impatient and I can't wait for bottoms up change to happen.
#
So I strongly recommend in the corporate world, and given how, you know, hierarchical Indian
#
society is in terms of, you know, where the government, where the corporations, etc.
#
I actually say, if you can influence people at the top.
#
And if until the culture, I mean, I'm not saying we shouldn't focus on the cultural
#
change and, you know, help change societal attitudes, values, etc. towards.
#
But as you rightly said, that's a long term project until then, it would really help if
#
we had the chairperson, the chief minister, etc. say, look, this matters.
#
Here's how they're going to do it.
#
I want to report in like, you know, one year or whatever.
#
I mean, India also really works like that.
#
And one of the reasons that say Godrej has been maybe more successful in this, in the
#
small journey that you've taken so far than other companies is at Godrej, it was Nisa
#
Godrej from the Godrej family, chairperson saying inclusion matters to us.
#
Here is what we're going to do.
#
I want to create a Godrej which is more inclusive, make it happen.
#
So everyone across the group, right, would read this message and say, okay, you know,
#
the chairperson from the family, this is what, you know, let's think about this, right.
#
And so many other companies, it might be someone really well meaning from HR, driving it through
#
diversity and inclusion.
#
It might not have the same impact.
#
So I think we have to do in, you know, which is why in states, right, and we talk about
#
some of the progressive states in India, right, in Kerala, in Chhattisgarh, the chief ministers
#
have gone on record to say that, you know, they care about LGBTQ inclusion, they have
#
given scholarships to trans people, they have supported so many events and so on.
#
And the bureaucracy will change, you know, when that clear direction comes, right.
#
And then that change percolates as well.
#
So I actually think it's a combination of both.
#
I think for immediate effect, it's actually more timely and like it just, you know, it's
#
just more clever to work with a top down approach.
#
But certainly the long term project has to be, you know, a long ground attempt at cultural,
#
at socio-cultural change through various things, through education, through movies, through
#
role modeling, and you know, so on.
#
And you know, as I write in the book, I don't have, I mean, I don't want to wait, I don't
#
I mean, we waited for seven decades after independence.
#
My queer brothers and sisters have waited for seven decades to be decriminalized.
#
And having said that as well, it's there's no equality as such, right, because we may
#
have had this 2018 verdict, but we've also had at the same time.
#
And you know, people tend to forget that we had a 2014 NALSA judgment, which was visionary
#
in terms of the scope of rights it offered our trans citizens of this country, which
#
has led to actually a not so sensitive trans act, which has recently been followed, right.
#
So there's so much we need to change the trans act, you know, hopefully soon, so that the
#
spirit of the NALSA judgment can actually be, can live in the trans act, you know, on
#
We need to convert the non criminality, which is what section 377 going away has offered
#
us into real equality on multiple fronts, which is comprehensive anti-discrimination
#
laws in our country, which we don't have other kinds of equality laws.
#
I write in the book about how, you know, at least for me, personally, I would love to
#
be married to my partner, I would love to frame my marriage certificate on the wall
#
and do all those kinds of maybe it's very silly.
#
So many of my friends critique me, they say, you know, you're doing heteronormative mimicry.
#
But you know, I want the right to do that if I choose, I mean, it's not heteronormative
#
For me, it's it's Karan Johar and Yash Chopra obsessed, Bollywood obsessed mimicry.
#
Coming up in the 80s and 90s, what to do, I blame Shah Rukh for all my romantic constructs.
#
But I, why shouldn't we have, I mean, why shouldn't I have the rights to be as silly
#
and stupid as everyone else if you know, in doing all of these things, right.
#
So I think we have a lot of work to do.
#
And in that work, I mean, I think a top down approach, I would like both.
#
I would like people in positions of power saying this matters and let's do it as well
#
No, no, I buy that, you know, both together can be helpful and it's not either or.
#
But I was actually interpreting the work that you do with corporate leaders like, you know,
#
Nisa Godrej doing the things that she does as in a sense bottom up, because it's not
#
imposed by the state saying do this.
#
It is voluntary action.
#
It's someone who runs a company herself saying that, you know, this is a sort of culture
#
I would like in my company and this is what I'll do for it.
#
So in that sense, you know, because it's voluntary action and not imposed by the state, I was
#
referring to that as bottom up.
#
I can see how in through another prism, it can seem as top down and in the context of
#
what is happening within the company.
#
And my next question kind of comes there that, you know, as you've sort of detailed through
#
your book, it's you know, you've done pioneering work with Godrej and, you know, various other
#
companies have also kind of been doing great work from, you know, IBM to Cummins to, you
#
know, various other people.
#
Now the question is that there was also that sort of disturbing example of that person
#
in charge of diversity and inclusion at Tech Mahindra who was, you know, bigoted towards
#
And when that came out, of course, when it became a big thing on Twitter, she was fired
#
and an inquiry was done and all of that.
#
And as you point out, the people who actually, you know, Anand Mahindra who actually runs
#
the company is extremely enlightened that way, but that doesn't necessarily seep through
#
And this is a question that you've sort of raised yourself at that point where you talk
#
about this incident that, you know, it's okay to have enlightened people at the top, make
#
these rules and make these whatever.
#
But it's also, you know, you know, that doesn't necessarily mean that the culture down below
#
changes and the homophobia goes away, whereas I would imagine if you're working in a company
#
and you have rules that forbid you from doing certain things, you will have to follow those
#
rules and you'll internalize them and the culture will change a bit.
#
But at the same time, you're bringing in these sort of normalized attitude towards, you know,
#
certain kinds of people and those are not going to disappear, those will manifest in
#
And, you know, I know your thoughts on this are still evolving as you raise it as a question
#
So, you know, can you tell me a little bit more about how you've thought on this?
#
Have there been moments where you felt despair and said that, you know, even if, you know,
#
we do all this work, people are what they are, or are you generally hopeful because,
#
you know, your book is full of such stories of hope and such stories of inclusion.
#
What's your sort of overall take on this?
#
No, I feel despair every day.
#
Every day I fluctuate between hope and despair, hope and despair all the time.
#
If I end on hope, 51% of the time and despair, 49%, I'm fine.
#
My thoughts on this are, I think what TechMind did ultimately was very good because I think
#
they role modeled what, you know, in that sense, in terms of when the issue comes out,
#
I thought the response was amazing.
#
And it also sent a strong message throughout, right, we will not tolerate this at all.
#
And in fact, TechMind has since then, in another part of the book, I talk about how they've
#
launched, you know, same sex partnership benefits, and so many other things.
#
So since then, they've gone on a great learning journey, which is great.
#
So I'm, you know, was it good for the individual who went through this?
#
I mean, you know, he, I'm in touch with him.
#
And he has still been traumatized with that.
#
And that is what I talk about in the chapter, right?
#
I said, these are real people.
#
Even if you take all the steps after something has been found, you know, it's very, very
#
That person has suffered for all these years.
#
I think this is only going to become less and less if companies role model this kind
#
So I mean, I think it would be very naive to imagine that just because you have policies
#
and you have senior people who say this is the kind of world we want to create, we're
#
not going to have people, you know, who are going to be bigoted.
#
But which is why then you need to act, right?
#
You need to translate the intent of your policies into action.
#
If you are saying we don't discriminate and when someone discriminates, how do you act?
#
Because everyone else is watching, right?
#
All the thousands of employees at Tech Mahindra were watching.
#
They were like, discrimination happened.
#
The CEO tweeted, Anand Mahindra tweeted, inquiry was made.
#
Which means that rights matter here, which means that tomorrow, if I have some issue
#
that I go to them with, they will take me seriously, right?
#
Everyone else outside was also watching.
#
They said, look, here's a company, mistakes happen everywhere.
#
This thing has happened here.
#
They've acted in this way.
#
So I think it's how you behave at these moments also that matters.
#
I mean, you can role model more and more of this thing that we have a zero tolerance policy.
#
You know, it's very clear how we expect you to behave.
#
And I've given so many other, there's been so many other cases as well in the book, right?
#
I talk about say maybe a community business where Sandeep goes through and Sandeep has
#
a boss who's like, who makes a joke about, you know, when Sandeep says, I'm getting married
#
This, you know, the insensitive boss says, why are you, you know, number nine or something.
#
And then like, Sandeep raises the complaint.
#
Now this was a comment.
#
And then the company here sends that boss for sensitivity training.
#
And you know, the boss comes back and says, I'm sorry, I, you know, I made that comment.
#
And they go through that sensitivity training, right?
#
So there's, I think it's important to respond at this time, right?
#
And to say that as an organization, we are setting these policies, we are investing in
#
the, in a culture of training our employees.
#
And if mistakes happen, here is how they're going to act on them.
#
I think the more and more you role model this good behavior, the less you have chances
#
of these incidents happening.
#
Another interesting case study is Kochi Metro, right?
#
Which is not about discrimination, but about the fact that, you know, this is an evolving
#
So Kochi Metro takes a great step of saying, we want to increase, we want to hire trans
#
people, which is incredible.
#
A lot of trans people are hired, but then many of them leave, not because Kochi Metro
#
is necessarily a discriminating organization, but because they're unable to find houses.
#
Because people don't want to rent, you know, homes to trans people.
#
And so it's very hard for them to like to arrive at work and to stay close to office
#
and to arrive at work, et cetera, right?
#
So as I write in the book, organizations have to think through some of these things.
#
Now Kochi Metro understood, relearned, and I believe right now when it hires trans people,
#
it goes a little extra mile in helping them either as a guarantee in terms of, you know,
#
when they're looking for houses in terms of landlords and saying, we will serve as a guarantor
#
or so on, but going that extra mile.
#
So I think this is iterative.
#
There's enough examples also to show of how companies and, you know, Kochi Metro is not
#
a company, it's a state organization, are learning on the way and learning how to, you
#
know, act decently and to be good.
#
So that gives me hope in that sense.
#
You know, in your book, there's also the great example of the Lalit and, you know, how they
#
have a policy of sort of hiring more and more trans employees.
#
And yeah, I mean, that, you know, one of the lessons perhaps from the book is that how
#
incentives can also sort of shape culture.
#
You know, as I keep saying in my economisty jargony way, we'll take a quick commercial
#
And after we come back, we'll wrap up your personal journey and we'll start talking about,
#
you know, your work at GoodRage and, you know, everything that you've been doing in the last
#
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Welcome back to the scene and the unseen.
#
I'm chatting with Parmeshani on his wonderful book, Quiristan, which, you know, is eye opening
#
and there is so much to learn there, even for someone who thinks that, you know, they
#
know the subject very well.
#
So you know, let's kind of get back to your sort of personal journey and you know, one
#
of the delightful things that struck me about your preface or your prologue or, you know,
#
the start of your book was when you know, you point out how your dad got to know of
#
your being gay through the BBC.
#
That was pretty fascinating.
#
Tell me a bit about that and how did he react and how did your parents kind of sort of deal
#
Yeah, so it was, I was at MIT, I had just organized a big South Asian LGBTQ film festival
#
over there, which was very hard because in the middle of my, you know, academic semester,
#
I thought he one must do this.
#
And so it was the first time that something like this was happening on the East Coast
#
because on the West Coast, there was say Tricone and a lot of, you know, queer stuff happening.
#
But you know, Boston had Masala, which was a South Asian LGBTQ organization, but they
#
had never really, and you know, New York had Salga and all, but they never attempted something
#
like, you know, like a queer festival of this nature before.
#
And a BBC journalist called me and they asked, they talked to us, talked to me about it.
#
And I happily gave the interview and the BBC chose to put it up on their front page, on
#
their homepage, when the interview ran.
#
And it was interesting because the top story was Parvez Musharraf and Parvez Musharraf's
#
picture, who at that time was, was president of Pakistan.
#
And then below that was this article with my photo saying South Asian gays find US voice.
#
And it was very interesting because, you know, I started getting calls from people all around
#
the world saying, you know, BBC is saying that you're gay and you're doing all of this.
#
And my cousin actually called me for a moment, she's like, listen, because I hadn't, I was
#
out to my mom, but I wasn't out to my dad at that time.
#
And so yeah, so she was like, you know, it's not going to be fine if someone forwards this
#
to your dad, I think you should call him.
#
So I called him and I had to tell him, I had to tell him a bunch of things.
#
I said, look, I'm gay, and the whole world knows about it because the BBC did a story.
#
So and you know, the BBC is right, at least in those days, it used to be right, it was
#
known for its accuracy, even now, I suppose.
#
So it's like, you know, it's on the BBC, it's true.
#
And he had to react at that, right.
#
So not only had he to, did he have to deal with the fact that his son was gay, he had
#
to deal with the fact that it was now a world story.
#
Given that, I think he was, it took him some time because he reacted more like a typical
#
Indian parent than my mom, because he was like, oh, what will the world, as the world
#
knows now already know, darling, he was like, oh, I wanted grandchildren, I was like, we
#
can get grandchildren, we can get grandchildren, don't worry, like, yeah, I thought you would
#
get married, we'll get married, just be a, just be a guy, he's like, that's not what
#
I was like, yeah, life is, life is sometimes like that.
#
And over time, he has accepted.
#
Now with Queeristan out, he forwards me articles that he's read about it.
#
And he's like, I saw your show with Faye D'Souza, you spoke well, or things like that, right.
#
So it's been a journey.
#
With my mom, it was immediate.
#
It was kind of underwhelming, because I told my mom, mom, I think I'm gay.
#
And she was like, you think you're sure?
#
And I was like, I'm sure I'm gay.
#
And she was like, okay, what should we have for dinner?
#
And that was really the conversation with her.
#
And I kind of felt a little cheated, because I had made all these like, you know, but you
#
don't understand, but this, but that I made all these dialogues in my head, which I couldn't
#
And then I told her, I said, why aren't you having any drama?
#
And she was like, you know, I don't, what is there to have drama?
#
And she was like, refreshingly, cool about it.
#
Cooker me se chana kisne nikara, if they're listening to this, hello, uncle and auntie.
#
And let's kind of now move on.
#
You're at MIT, you've even set up a sort of a kind of a forum there, you know, you're
#
considering, you know, helping to run that while you're there.
#
And then you decide to come back to India and join the corporate life.
#
So how did that sort of shift?
#
That was all because of, you know, Shah Rukh Khan, I think has ruined my life.
#
First with those ideas of love, romance, I'm also doing, you know, arms ahead and yes,
#
Chopra first, because of you know, Chandni and that rooftop helicopter rose petals, I
#
began to think I also want like that only these days if the husband smiles at me after
#
waking up, I feel happy.
#
But my ideas of romance and no everything, I mean, I think Bollywood them super Bollywood
#
So multiple things, actually, it's I saw Swades, I think a lot of people who came back at that
#
time, you know, Shah Rukh, Ashutosh, we could have been living nicely in Seattle.
#
You made us come back, I would have had a nice house with a picket fence.
#
And maybe like, you know, an exotic foreign husband.
#
No, I saw Swades, it was a bunch of things that had happened that scene.
#
I'd finished my thesis, I was very tired.
#
I was working on this, you know, MIT think tank that I'd set up with Henry Jenkins, my
#
professor, I was enjoying that.
#
I was interviewing because I did want to, you know, stay back my I was I was in a relationship,
#
I was in a committed relationship.
#
And my partner that time was finishing his PhD at MIT.
#
So I did want to stay on in America.
#
But the kind of job offers I was getting were from Microsoft, and they were very nice.
#
But you know, I'd studied as a media, I mean, I studied as a humanist.
#
And you know, and the kind of offers I was getting were to help market windows, and things
#
And it was very good money, but I kind of didn't see how my background and my humanities
#
training would be of any use there.
#
So I was thinking these things through.
#
And then a bunch of things happened, you know, I saw Swades, and I was like, No, no, no,
#
I think I should use this, I should come back to India and see what I can do with these
#
different things that one has learned.
#
And I then happened to meet, say, Anand and Anuradha in Boston, who were visiting, and
#
they were like, you know, listen, now that you're done, or whatever, if you want to come
#
and work, come and work at Mahindra, there's lots that one can do.
#
So it was a combination of both of those things, the fact that there was a blank kind of canvas
#
waiting for me at Mahindra.
#
But plus, I'd seen Swades, I think if I'd had that conversation without seeing Swades,
#
I would have said, Yeah, yeah, fine, fine.
#
But you know, I want to be here only.
#
If I'd seen Swades and not met them, then I mean, there was, there was the opportunity.
#
So I think it was everything.
#
There are days when I'm grateful I came back, there are days when I feel that I could have
#
been a nice foreign NRI gay person coming once every year or whatever, for weddings.
#
But let's go, so it's done, what's done is done.
#
Yeah, it's interesting that you should ascribe so much credit to Shah Rukh Khan, because,
#
you know, one of the quotes I really liked in your book was about how your friend Ian,
#
Sir Ian to the rest of us, Sir Ian McKellen, says that, you know, once he came out as gay,
#
the nature of his acting changed, where, you know, you quote him telling you that, you
#
know, coming out was such a relief on all accounts, everything improved, including my
#
Up until then, my acting was about disguising.
#
After I came out, it became about revelation, stop quote.
#
And that's such a beautiful quote.
#
And it just made me sort of stop and think about it for a while before I continue reading.
#
And it strikes me that Shah Rukh Khan's acting is just all performative as Bollywood has
#
to be and not about revelation at all.
#
But that sort of aside apart, you also point out in your book about how sort of Ted India
#
2009, where, by the way, just to kind of tell our listeners, you know, Ted had their first
#
conference in India, the only conference in India in 2009.
#
And they selected a bunch of India fellows for that, which included, you know, Parmesh
#
and me and, you know, various people you've named, like, you named Jasmeen Pateja of Blank
#
Noise, who's done such incredible innovative work.
#
And so the bunch of us were all brought together in Mysore for this great Ted conference.
#
And even that, that Mysore at Infosys campus was crazy because I think it was made by Hercules
#
contractor and, you know, it was surreal because all the buildings were based on famous buildings.
#
So somewhere there were White House, somewhere there was a Capitol, somewhere there was the
#
Parthenon and whatever.
#
And it was completely surreal, but also in a sense, perhaps an apt place to gather like
#
this because it was this vast global gathering.
#
But you know, for me, it was just an event where I go, I watch some great talks, which
#
I could even have watched on YouTube, you know, and, you know, get to meet, get to hang
#
out with cool people like you.
#
But you've spoken about how it then, you know, gave you an impetus to do some of what you
#
did next, especially later with the Godrej Kulcha Lab.
#
Tell me a little bit about that.
#
But before that, I want to dispute the fact that Shah Rukh's acting is all performative
#
and not about revelation.
#
As an avowed Shah Rukh fan, I would like to humbly disagree.
#
I think if you have seen Raees, if you have seen Zero, which I loved, I thought it was
#
If you've seen Fan, which was incredible.
#
If you've seen Paheli, if you've seen Kabhi Haan Kabhi Na, if you've seen Chakde, if you've
#
seen The Ranger, if you've seen Swades for that matter, you know, or Raju or, you know,
#
if you see the range of films that Shah Rukh has done, they are so much about revelation.
#
I think one of the highlights of Shah Rukh is that he makes you feel that you are taking
#
He genuinely gives that to you as well.
#
So I would urge you to relook Shah Rukh with a more loving gaze and discover the joy of
#
He gives you the same piece of him in every film, but we'll agree to disagree for the
#
sake of amity and sort of continue with our conversation.
#
Tell me about Ted India.
#
So Shah Rukh incidentally also gave a great Ted talk in Vancouver.
#
And I must tell you that at that same Ted conference, which I happened to be there at
#
Vancouver, you know, there was Elon Musk hanging around on the side.
#
There was Al Gore who was standing behind me in the buffet line eating very quietly.
#
No one got any, you know, whatever.
#
But for Shah Rukh, the moment the door opened, the moment, whatever, there were like thousands
#
of people waiting in Vancouver, screaming their heads out.
#
So you know, Shah Rukh is Shah Rukh.
#
I just say that, look, popularity is not a sign of quality.
#
I mean, look at Modiji.
#
As a fan, as a Shah Rukh fan, as an avowed Shah Rukh fan, as a connoisseur of Shah Rukh
#
acting and revelation, sometimes you can have it all.
#
You know, I had a similar conversation with Parumita Vohra, our virtual friend.
#
She was on my show and she's also a Shah Rukh fan.
#
So maybe you guys will make me reconsider.
#
I don't think so, but it's kind of, I'll have to let you have the last word on this as we
#
I can see you want to move ahead.
#
Shah Rukh, we love you.
#
Having said that, yes, Ted India being selected as a Ted India fellow.
#
And I would say off late being a Ted senior fellow, because I've just finished that stint
#
has been quite transformative.
#
I mean, in 2009, Ted was not this great global juggernaut.
#
You know, Ted has just started putting up talks online.
#
And if you see some of these early talks, it's like, you know, it's not the kind of
#
highly produced tech talk, which has now almost become a meme.
#
Like, oh, you gave a Ted talk, okay, you're uncool.
#
You know, that kind of thing hasn't come.
#
That kind of, you know, in those days, it was very, very early.
#
And this whole format, which Chris and the team have like, you know, taken to such incredible
#
different directions over the years was just about being, you know, coming into its own.
#
So for me, being a Ted was like a brain popping experience.
#
It transformed my life in so many ways, because at that time, I had agreed to, I had gone
#
I'd left the Mahindra job.
#
I'd started a PhD at UPenn and I'd chosen to go back to digging deep again.
#
I'd spent some years and, and my life has been this constant tension between do I dig
#
deep or do I spread wide?
#
You know, and for those who are listening to the podcast, Amit is grinning right now.
#
No, it's not what you're thinking about Amit.
#
I wasn't grinning and I wasn't thinking that at all.
#
I was talking about my career.
#
So you know, at that time, I had gone back to the PhD and I had said, you know, I want
#
to spend some years and working on, on academic research.
#
But then I came to this, you know, then I got selected for the state India fellowship
#
and then I flew back and to have a space where you could have science, humanities, medicine,
#
people from NGOs, spirituality, love, romance, dance, music, everything kind of come together
#
fatah fatah one after the other in this like, you know, bhel puri mix of like a brain massage
#
kind of, yeah, for me, I'd never seen anything like it.
#
Just being there, witnessing it all and then witnessing all of us, right?
#
Seeing all these amazing Ted India fellows.
#
So many of whom I've like, tracked with admiration over the years, right?
#
Someone like a Rikim Gandhi, who was my classmate, who was also with me at MIT, who then who
#
was training to become, you know, training for NASA, who then left and formed an organization
#
called Digital Green, which works with farmers in rural India, giving them information and,
#
you know, technology access and things like that to young schoolmasters like Barbara Lee,
#
who despite coming from such, you know, underprivileged backgrounds were creating education alternatives
#
for so many children in their village in Bengal, to like, you know, artists like Sharmishta,
#
to like, you know, I mean, so just like really, really, really, so it was both the conference
#
format that I was like, wow, you can have this kind of space to the people I was like,
#
you know, there are so many cool people in India, all of whom are doing such amazing
#
But I was like, I don't want to go back and like, spend six years in doing this PhD here.
#
I want to do something Ted like.
#
Now, I didn't want to do Ted India, I didn't want to do a three day conference, but I was
#
like, now what I want to do is I want to live in this state of Tedness, of any given day
#
I want to be mixing science, design, arts, policy, I want to like, you know, create this
#
space in India, and what would it mean like to have this broad space like think.
#
So that was the, that was my idea.
#
I went back, I dropped out of the PhD program, which they didn't like, of course, because
#
you know, I'd filled a seat.
#
And now suddenly I was dropping out.
#
And so they said, Look, we love you, but don't ever come back here again.
#
And of course, me being the drama queen said, who wants to come back to you, pen, X, never,
#
I'll go anywhere but except for y'all, and you know, we had that kind of showdown.
#
And then I came back and then I started saying, Okay, now what to do?
#
How do I create this space?
#
And so I started talking to people, people from Mahindra, people, you know, I've encountered
#
people from the media, and randomly, one of Sandeep Murthy, who's an investor, who runs
#
Lightbox, which is one of the most exciting venture funds in India right now.
#
At that time, he was running Sharpaalo and Kleiner, Ramshri Ram's Fund and Kleiner Perkins,
#
And he was like, you know, you should meet Nisa.
#
I think she'll get you and y'all are both kind of mad and maybe y'all will hit it off.
#
And that's how I made Nisa we met, we realized that we both, you know, we're very different
#
people, but we connected on so many things we connected on design thinking on IDEO.
#
She wanted to know more about LGBTQ issues and my life, and we just, we just started
#
talking and she's like, Look, I don't know what your idea is, I still don't understand
#
what does it mean to create this space and blah, blah, blah, but she's like, I like you.
#
So do you want to work at Godrej?
#
I was like, I was like, Godrej, no, I mean, I want to do this, she's like, why don't you
#
And you know, if you help me with other things, I'll let you do your idea.
#
And I was like, okay, that's and 10 years later, we're still here.
#
They're still arguing and talking and pushing each other and laughing and imagining.
#
Yeah, it's been amazing.
#
And what was your conception of the culture lab when you started it?
#
What did you want it to be at that early stage and how has it then evolved?
#
So my original conception was very, I mean, you know, since I'd been at a place like MIT,
#
it was a mixture of like an institution, which is how the old world thinks of things, right?
#
So first I said, maybe it should be a building with people and you know, like, like a building
#
because model for spaces that I had seen were like, cultural centers, like you have to have
#
a building and office and all.
#
But then the MIT thinking started to kick in and I was like, you know, why does it need
#
a space and this and also, I mean, Nisa didn't give me much money.
#
She was like, you have one desk in this corner and like, you know, here's a little bit of
#
money now, you know, one can do maybe one could have done one event or two events with
#
I was like, clearly, this is not the kind of thing where we will have buildings and
#
large amounts of people and like things like that.
#
So it can't be like a university center.
#
It has to be something which is shape shifting, which is packable and you can take it anywhere
#
and so I mean, because of the nature and the frugality and you know, these challenges,
#
I think we kind of evolved a new kind of space.
#
So a lab could be an idea space.
#
So we started and I remember that I'd read something that in a paper that, you know,
#
my mentor Henry Jenkins and my MIT classmate Sam Ford had written about surplus audiences
#
and they'd done a great white paper on wrestling fans on professional wrestling fans.
#
And they'd said that, you know, we have to look at this idea of surplus, right?
#
So WWE, this professional wrestling, when they tend to think of who their audience is,
#
they used to think earlier that their audience would be 18 to 35 white male, whatever.
#
But as they did research, they realized, I mean, what is professional wrestling like
#
it's naked men, naked, sweaty men in a ring, doing very highly and you know, WWE, it's
#
all kind of larger than life performance.
#
So who likes seeing this?
#
They said, you know, a lot of women were seeing this.
#
Some women like seeing naked men throwing themselves against each other and jumping
#
We have not thought of women as our audience, but like, you know, that's a surplus audience.
#
Then they looked and they said, who else likes seeing this?
#
It's like, you know, gay men like seeing, you know, naked men in chettis jumping up
#
and down on each other.
#
They go, gay men is another demographic.
#
So as they did that, they said, okay, so this idea of surplus was very interesting.
#
And you know, so I started thinking of that and I started thinking of, can we create a
#
lab with the surplus of what is already around us?
#
So then I said, okay, you know, I have this, there is like, at that time, we didn't have
#
a auditorium of the size that we do now.
#
There was a small conference room somewhere in there.
#
I said, but chalo, it's being used for office buildings and meetings and all.
#
But if we arrange the chairs like this, it kind of becomes an auditorium.
#
So I don't need to create a building without it.
#
There is already a thing, right?
#
It's just that when people are not using it, I'll use it.
#
And everything came from that.
#
So the time people tended not to use this conference room kind of auditorium space was
#
at end of the week, 5pm on Friday.
#
It was easy to get booking at that time.
#
So we said all our events will be at 5pm on Friday, because nobody else was booking it
#
at Godrej's at that time.
#
And since then, it's kind of stayed there, whatever.
#
So a lot of those decisions came from that.
#
We said, what if we don't have...
#
So then we began to look at permanence, impermanence, again, inspired by, you know, by my friends
#
like Rahul Mehrotra, the architect, and you know, Rahul, who's now Dean of Graduate Studies
#
at the Harvard School of Design, has done a lot of work on permanence and impermanence
#
and how do you build for impermanence.
#
And one of his things has been recently he's been studying the Kummela as, you know, as
#
a fantastic site, where you honor the earth, because it's eco-friendly, because the entire
#
city is built for a short period of time, and then it's dismantled and it's taken away.
#
So unlike, say, the waste of building for the Olympics or things like that, right, where
#
so many countries build a whole infrastructure, which then is left behind as a dead, you know,
#
as this big white elephant that you don't know what to do with.
#
The Kumbh and all are interesting because they give you this framework of saying that
#
you can design for impermanence.
#
What matters is the gathering.
#
What matters is not the building.
#
So I was very informed by things like that.
#
So a lot of the culture labs, whether it's philosophy, whether it's cross pollination,
#
whether it's the fact that we have a loose, shape shifting lab, which kind of every few
#
years changes what we do, you know, from an event space, we said we are in an event space,
#
but we're also resource space.
#
So we started doing white papers that serve people more, which off late said we had an
#
So we started doing fellowships at various levels for like, you know, college students
#
So we said that we had a cultural node and cultural connector.
#
So we started connecting other cultural organizations in the country in interesting ways to come
#
So whether it is what we do, how we imagine ourselves as this jugaru kind of place, you
#
know, which kind of exists through the ephemeral, a lot of our events are about transience.
#
So we started by doing a lot of these pop up museums.
#
We did a museum of memory as our first pop up in 2011, which was a old factory that was
#
being demolished the next day.
#
And we filled it for one whole day with art, design, talks, dance performances, the next
#
day, the bulldozers came and demolished everything.
#
So it was an interesting experience and everyone who was there and there were hundreds if not
#
thousands of people knew that they were taking part in the happy birthday party of that factory.
#
So what does it mean to honor, you know, a space by through this kind of solidarity knowing
#
very well together that tomorrow it won't be there.
#
But what will remain are the moments we create and the digital archive, which is a trace.
#
So a lot of that has kind of informed the work that we do.
#
We're not obsessed with permanence, but we are obsessed with connections, creating connections
#
between, you know, our speakers and performers or our speakers and our audience or giving
#
resources and things like that.
#
But it's all I mean, so the influences have been vast and varied from architecture, from
#
philosophy, from Kenya Hara, who is this incredible Japanese designer.
#
You know, he was the chief designer of Muji and he did the Nagano Olympics, spoke to me
#
And you know, he's known for his minimalism and I hate minimalism as a design practice.
#
I think minimalism is boring as hell.
#
You know, this whole like one long gray table with one marigold on the corner, I mean, it
#
Like if you give me a small table, I'll want to keep 100 things on it.
#
You know, this explains our disagreement on Shah Rukh, by the way, because I like minimalism
#
Why be minimalist and you can be maximalist anyway.
#
So Kenya Hara, who and he has built Muji on minimalism as I was telling you, it's like,
#
you know, no, she's like, fine.
#
He's like, let's not think of minimalism.
#
He's like, why don't you look at it as emptiness?
#
And he's like, you hate minimalism, don't he's like, I designed for emptiness and emptiness
#
Emptiness is I give you something that you can fill how you want.
#
So when I'm giving you something that's gray and utilitarian, it is empty.
#
I'm offering it to you.
#
And I thought that was interesting as a way of viewing life, right?
#
How can you design for emptiness so that everyone who goes away takes, you know, fills it with
#
So anyway, the lab philosophy has grown from so many various influences, people who flow
#
Our incredible team members over the years, we've had some brilliant people, mostly young,
#
you know, flow through the lab, you know, come spend some years with the lab.
#
They've gone on to do amazing things.
#
You know, one of our alums is in Spain doing incredible work.
#
Another one left the lab and joined the UN has has been building toilets across the country
#
as part of Swach Bharat and then through a private CSR initiative, someone else joined
#
the lab, he had trained as a lawyer, joined the lab, discovered so many other things and
#
is now a fashion stylist at Grazia.
#
So it's been quite amazing.
#
I think the legacy of the lab is just the incredible, you know, people who have spoken
#
at it, collaborated with it and worked at it.
#
So it's been an interesting journey, but really thinking about some of these things of like,
#
you know, permanence versus impermanence and so on.
#
No, and that's so fascinating, I need to sort of think deeper about it and process all of
#
It also strikes me that, you know, virtual spaces also by the very nature are impermanent
#
in a way and they've kind of been, you know, forced upon us now by the circumstances of
#
And it also just struck me when you were speaking about filling emptiness that every time I
#
embark upon recording a conversation like this, I am actually, what I'm trying to do
#
is fill that emptiness of the space that lies ahead for the two or three hours that the
#
I want to now, you know, let's kind of move on to the book, which also sort of describes,
#
you know, how you straddle these two different worlds simultaneously, like I was very struck
#
by your phrasing early on in the book, where you speak about how you have a day job plus
#
a gay job, and the gay job, of course, is the sort of advocacy where you get corporates
#
to become more LGBTQ friendly.
#
And you know, you described that elsewhere in the book, quote, I am arguing from my unique
#
inside out position as a corporate person working on LGBTQ issues, and my outside in
#
position as an activist and cultural creator using the corporate world to advance my agenda.
#
This is not just within Godrej elsewhere, you're right, quote, I use every occasion
#
that I can to talk about LGBTQ issues.
#
The Red Ball Music Academy invites me for a talk, I'll queer it.
#
The El Decor India Design ID Summit, you bet.
#
A new Columbia Business School batch is visiting India, time for a gay lecture.
#
The Society for Human Resource Management, pretty obvious what I'll be speaking about.
#
If I am visiting Yale, Brandeis or Harvard or the Edinburgh International Culture Summit
#
at the Scottish Parliament, the desi rainbow flag flies on foreign soil too.
#
And you know, you mentioned early on at one part when I think, you know, Anand Mahindra
#
offered you a job and you asked him that does your company have same sex spousal benefits?
#
And he was like, well, not yet, but you know, we can do something like that for you.
#
And from that to making this an actual mission, and in my mind is very much, it feels bottom
#
up to me that you're getting, you're talking to corporations and getting them to voluntarily
#
sort of put these practices into play.
#
How did this come about?
#
Because it obviously evolved into something that had a sense of a mission about it.
#
Was it like that from the start and or, you know, how did you kind of view it going into
#
Did you think that this is something I've got to spend so much time on as you ended
#
Yeah, it's very strategic.
#
I mean, you know, even calling it a gay job, I mean, I say it in jest and also to rhyme,
#
but also very much because it is, there is a certain performativity, which comes through
#
in the writing in Kueristan, but which also very much comes through in how I choose to
#
present and interact with the world.
#
There is a visible ization that I do, and I do it with intent, because it is a form
#
I do want to queer business in multiple ways, right?
#
One is to, what would it mean for business to have a queer person, very visibly queer
#
out there in their midst, right?
#
So I'm queering business with my presence and with my vociferous presence.
#
What do you mean by visible ization, sorry?
#
Because I, just like other straight people talk about, you know, their lives, I mean,
#
I talk in my business meetings, someone will say, because, you know, people in business
#
don't just talk about work, right?
#
Someone will say, hey, you know, my daughter's school this, now her 10th standard, I'll say,
#
hey, you know, my partner this, my this, my that.
#
And I think for too long, I mean, that's the other thing also, right?
#
Either queer people are closeted, so they don't share, or they're aren't, you know,
#
So a lot of people don't know what it's like, I mean, you know, and at least Godrej with
#
our senior leaders, everything, I make sure that if someone is talking about straightness,
#
I will make sure that I talk about queerness, because it should be as normal for them to
#
listen to what I did on the weekend, you know, I can say my partner and me, we went here,
#
we did this, as it is for me to listen to them about what they did on the weekend.
#
So I mean, so I'm, when I say queer business, I queer business with my, with my voice and
#
But also with this, with everything else, with the idea of, you know, what does it mean?
#
I love wearing bow ties, you know, and I wear bow ties a lot at business meetings, etc.
#
I don't know if it's not this, but like, I think over the years, Godrej has changed to
#
people can wear what they want.
#
And you know, all the way with me with my flamboyant bow ties to someone else who may
#
choose not to wear a tie, who may choose to wear jeans and t-shirts, right?
#
So I'd like to think that my presence in terms of being so confident with my dress sense
#
has empowered other people to say, why do we have a formal dress code?
#
Let's all dress the way we want, right?
#
So that's another way of querying business, I suppose.
#
And in so many other ways, right?
#
In terms of just thinking about things, in terms of how can we think differently and
#
Likewise, when I say I have a day job, I have a gay job.
#
The gay job is very much about interjecting this in other companies and talking to at
#
every location, at every space, etc. to widen people's horizons and imagine queerness and
#
inclusion as something that they can do.
#
But also to visible it for them that here is this person who's queer, you know, himself.
#
So in that sense, it's a it is very much me.
#
So I'm not inauthentic, but I'm very conscious of the performative aspect of my of my of
#
my gayness in that sense.
#
And it is strategic and, you know, and I do it with with great intent.
#
And I don't leave any space where I can talk about the issues that matter.
#
Because I know that because who knows?
#
And that's the thing, right?
#
I do it for multiple reasons.
#
One is to widen people's horizons, open their minds.
#
Secondly, in that audience, there might be a young queer person, you know, who is going
#
through doubt, who's thinking, am I the only one who's thinking maybe the world isn't
#
going to get better, who's thinking all these things.
#
And I want to show that person that here is someone who is working at a company, who is
#
trying to bring about change.
#
And don't worry, you know, it's going to be a better world for you.
#
So one of the other reasons I do it is also to give people the sense of, you know, I'm
#
visibilizing to also give them hope.
#
I write in the book about how I give a lecture at IIM Kori Kod one year.
#
And I often do recruitment for Godrej, right?
#
I go and talk about and of course, my half an hour recruitment lecture will be 27 minutes
#
about LGBTQ rights in India and three minutes about why they should join Godrej.
#
Because you give me a stage, I'll talk about LGBTQ inclusion.
#
So I, you know, did this one year.
#
And you know, there was this one girl who stood in the corner and just looked at me
#
And this often happens.
#
Sometimes students will come up and say, sir, can we take selfie?
#
And sometimes it will just like kind of hang out.
#
Next year, I went back again.
#
And this girl came up to me and said, you know, I heard you.
#
It was so because, you know, I'm lesbian, I'd come I was, you know, I was very scared.
#
I'd come to this place.
#
I didn't know if IIM K would be a welcoming, inclusive environment, but just hearing you
#
speak and you being not embarrassed at all and you speaking about it so naturally gave
#
I am part of the IIM K LGBTQ support group.
#
And you know, we're going to do such incredible work, right?
#
So one doesn't know how one's presence and when one talks about the how it can benefit
#
so many others, which is why I think like, you know, for me, this visibilizing aspect
#
is very, very important.
#
No, and it's so fascinating that this is like a strategic choice that you made.
#
And I'll take one more tangent, which I promise will be the last tangent because we really
#
ought to get to the meat of the book.
#
But I couldn't help this tangent because it's a subject that's kind of close to my heart.
#
You spoke earlier about how it is not only young people who are addicted to their gadgets,
#
but also, you know, old fogies like us, at least old fogies like me.
#
I don't want to offend you by calling you like us.
#
And so I was watching a heck of a lot of TikTok for a while last year.
#
And I found it remarkable because, you know, one, obviously, we know how the spread of
#
broadband after, you know, Jio really took over that space has, you know, empowered so
#
many more people with broadband than they otherwise would have had access to.
#
And TikTok was a very fascinating example of, you know, cultural expression being enabled
#
I have always felt that whatever we see in mainstream entertainment, including Bollywood,
#
it is either the content is driven by insiders who've been there forever but have regressive
#
views of Indian society or elite outsiders who've come with notions that don't transplant
#
so easily on, you know, Indian soil, as it were, you know, to paraphrase Ambedkar's words
#
in an unusual context, their top dressing on Indian soil.
#
But what TikTok gave me a sense was that here was because the means of production and distribution
#
was so democratized that here was sort of this enormous outpouring of what our culture
#
And one of the things which I found so heartening was that there was so much, you know, gay
#
expression on it, LGBTQ expression on it to the extent that, you know, when the war between
#
YouTubers and TikTokers erupted, a lot of the pejoratives YouTubers were using were,
#
you know, homophobic pejoratives like, oh, it's sweet and all of that nonsense.
#
And I found it interesting that I think and I wonder if you'd agree that what I found
#
happening on TikTok is that because there were so many LGBTQ people who were expressing
#
these alternate sexualities and even women expressing, you know, different aspects of
#
femininity than you'd otherwise see in popular culture, it created what, you know, the sociologist
#
Timur Kurran calls a preference cascade, that people watching this no doubt felt empowered
#
by this visualization, as you say, by knowing that there are so many other people who are
#
like me, who share the same taste as me.
#
And you just had an explosion of content, which is why I feel it's like incredibly tragic
#
and almost heartbreaking that TikTok got banned more than I would feel about any other app.
#
What are sort of your thoughts on this?
#
And you know, is this something that, you know, gets spoken about and so on?
#
Yeah, so I have a whole section in the in the book on TikTok, actually, which I love,
#
which, you know, comes towards the end.
#
And yeah, I mean, if I wish I knew about cascading preferentiality, I would have used it in the
#
But I do want to if I can just read out that section from the book, which I think explains
#
So this comes after me writing about so many of these TikTok videos with, you know, gay
#
man, gay, you know, either couple, single, etc., that, you know, my partner and me see
#
every morning, at least used to see while having breakfast together.
#
And you know, and this is how I end that section.
#
I read this TikTok co-option by queer Indian youth as a form of mimicry and hybridity to
#
use two popular terms from the cultural theorist Homi Baba.
#
I started this chapter by saying that we first need to imagine queeristan and then live in
#
I see the different acts of heteronormative mimicry being performed by the men in the
#
video and the videos as both homage to heteronormative romance, as well as the articulation of a
#
Over the course of repeated viewing, and because there are so many of these videos being produced
#
and circulated, this performed queerness gets delinked from the heteronormative homage it
#
started off and becomes valid on its own terms.
#
I consider this ubiquitous normalization of queer desires to be to be super exciting.
#
We are no longer a miniscule minority through TikTok, we are showing ourselves and being
#
seen all across India with every right swipe.
#
And that's what I feel, which is why I think it's really tragic that TikTok was banned,
#
but also because there's such a class element to it, right?
#
Because I love so many of the TikTok superstars come from smaller towns, smaller cities, you
#
know, a range of languages, you know, say versus, for example, Instagram users who tend
#
to be mostly big cities or English speaking and so on, right?
#
It's also economic cost because so many TikTok, you know, stars and influencers were making
#
money off TikTok in that sense, right?
#
So I think it's quite sad that, you know, TikTok is gone as of now.
#
So I, you know, maybe it will come back, you know, and all the TikTok stars can, you know,
#
can get back to being fabulous and showing, you know, everyone around them, you know,
#
the range of queer possibilities that exist across this country.
#
And that glass angle is indeed very stark because, you know, you and I, having grown
#
up so privileged to have access to all the platforms we would want to have access to.
#
And it just strikes me that TikTok just gave a platform to people who never had any platform
#
of any kind, not just in terms of performing themselves, but just watching entertainment
#
by people like themselves and then perhaps being inspired to do stuff of their own, which
#
Getting back to your day job plus gay job, as it were, you've also, you know, at one
#
point in your book, you had a couple of lines where you talk about all the talks, you go
#
from talk to talk to talk, and you're doing all of that with a sense of mission.
#
And at one point, you write, not all of these talks are easy to do.
#
And I sometimes find it tedious to repeat myself or answer really basic questions.
#
Diversity line main yeh sab karna partha hai, stop quote.
#
And I found this very charming, by the way, this interjection of your own voice, which
#
is so, you know, true to you and makes a book feel like, you know, someone close to you
#
is sitting and talking to you rather than you're reading some boring academic track.
#
But how hard was sort of like, what was the journey like?
#
I mean, I would imagine perhaps in a simplistic way that people are much more open now than
#
they might have been when, you know, you began 10 years ago.
#
No, people are still, it's still very early days, still really early days.
#
Still I will, you know, and I'm happy that they are calling me and I'm very happy to
#
go and I'm happy to talk till it will be a sea of, you know, last year I did organization
#
of pharmaceutical producing industries, etc., OPPA is largest pharma body in the country.
#
And I'm glad that they were doing a diversity day.
#
You know, they had so many, but I go on stage.
#
And one of the other things that I do is, if, you know, if I'm giving a talk and they
#
said to me, I make sure that the other people on the panel are different because, you know,
#
again, I'm super, I'm very conscious.
#
I don't want them to think the LGBT means having three gay men.
#
So I just, you know, I make sure I said, you know, do you have a someone who is lesbian
#
by do you have a trans person, you know, unhappy with a well-meaning ally and things like that.
#
But I really want you to even visually show when you are showing us people who are thinking
#
of diversity for the first time, it can't be cis gay men.
#
You need to have a range of people even visibly to show people, right?
#
And I think people are understanding this more and more that, you know, when you talk
#
about diversity, it has to be people speaking up for ourselves, right?
#
So this was again, you know, this particular thing, it was me, Naina, who's a trans woman
#
from Bangalore, who's a friend who's in the book, you know, Neelam Jain, who runs an incredible
#
periphery, which is an enterprise that places trans people and so on.
#
And the three of us on stage and we see the sea of blue suits.
#
And it's literally like 200 men in the room, all wearing blue suits or like shirts and
#
pants and maybe like four or five women in sarees conspicuous and, you know, they're
#
They're the organizers.
#
Like, I mean, it's so interesting, right?
#
It's so interesting because and there are glass ceilings, right?
#
In corporate India, because if you look, you know, even now in so many companies, entry
#
level will be 50 50 now, because more and more companies, even basic gender will say
#
we need to hire more women.
#
But by the time you read senior leadership, it's five percent, eight percent, ten percent
#
and every level women drop off either due to marriage, then so many women drop off after
#
you know, having a child and things like that.
#
And by the time you reach top management, it's a sea of men in blue suits.
#
In fact, I had an I had an episode with the amazing Namita Bhandari on how women's participation
#
in the workforce has actually gone down over the last 15 years, which is just mind blowing
#
And needless to say that when you have a room full of men in blue suits, there will be one
#
or two silly questions.
#
So I answer them with really with love and humor.
#
So I'm with empathy and I try and like personalize it.
#
So with a lot of people, I can understand there is so much ignorance.
#
So I say just ask, even if even if it's a bad question, it's better you ask and we can
#
answer you than you don't ask and you have this misguided assumption.
#
I get lots of silly questions, questions ranging all the way from if we offer this
#
So I mean, now more and more progressive companies are offering gender affirmation surgery to
#
They're not offering anything extra.
#
It's just let's say if you were working at Godridge and your health insurance would be
#
five lakhs or whatever.
#
If you happen to transition, you can use your health insurance coverage of that same amount
#
I think the company has to do they're paying the same premium for you as everyone else
#
is that your insurer will have to cover that.
#
And most insurers across the country are understanding and covering it because it's, you know, when
#
you do a group insurance, you pay a group premium and whether they use it for a heart
#
attack or an accident or this, it doesn't matter to the insurance.
#
They charge your premium based on how many people in the group they think will avail
#
So still, I mean, this is and more and more companies are offering gender affirmation,
#
but you will still hear there'll be someone who will say, but you know, if I offer this,
#
what if so many trans people join me just to do the surgery and then they'll leave,
#
you know, and then you have to explain to them that first of all, it's not like eating
#
an ice cream or going to the movie or whatever.
#
It's not like, let's transition.
#
You have to go through so many evaluations.
#
A doctor has to certify that you're ready to transition.
#
You have to begin hormones.
#
Then you do the surgery.
#
It takes a lot of time.
#
The woman who wants to transition would be serious about it, would be uncomfortable living
#
in a body different from the one that they feel and so on.
#
So it's a long process.
#
No one is going to join you just to avail of the benefit and then leave.
#
In fact, it would be the contrary.
#
They would feel happy that you are offering them this benefit, which is so important to
#
them and it would probably make them more loyal.
#
So think about it as you would think about say, you know, maternity leave, right?
#
Now it is a norm for you to give six months maternity leave, right?
#
You don't say, oh, someone will join me, become pregnant and then leave.
#
You've understood that maternity is something and you can't be equal in this because as
#
far as we know right now, men are not able to carry babies.
#
So it's something which, you know, that you have to offer your women employees, right?
#
You don't think you've stopped thinking.
#
I don't know if anyone thought given someone join me, take six months maternity leave and
#
So earlier when I was younger, I would get maybe irritable and angry and say, what rubbish,
#
Now it's just extreme patience.
#
I understand that so many of these questions might come out of ignorance.
#
I don't think it's willful malice or homophobia at times.
#
I think I like to give people the benefit of doubt.
#
So then I explain to them patiently, things like that, or I personalize it for them.
#
Like when people say, when did you know you were gay, I say, when did you know you were
#
I say, ha ha ha, it's the same, no, I mean, you know, they're like, uh, it often helps
#
with people to say, you know, think about this.
#
What if your child was queer?
#
Would you be thinking like this?
#
Wouldn't you like your child to go to a school and college in which they were respected and
#
not treated differently?
#
Remember that the queer people who are coming and working for us are also someone else's
#
So if you don't want your child to be treated differently somewhere else, should you be
#
So I think a lot of times you have to kind of use different methods and getting the message
#
Uh, one of the reasons I wrote this book was also so that I can tell people, just read
#
the book and then ask questions later because anything that can be answered by the book,
#
Yeah, that can make you very unpopular because one of the things that I have been warned
#
not to say to my friends when we are discussing something is, Hey, just listen to that episode.
#
But no, I think, I think, I think the book is kind of a great service to all of us.
#
And I found a couple of terms that you've used in your book concepts rather, uh, extremely
#
fascinating and I'd like you to sort of go over them for our listeners.
#
One of them is Jogar resistance.
#
What is, I know what is Jogar and I know what is resistance.
#
Tell me about Jogar resistance.
#
The term that I use for my resourceful way of bringing about change by placing myself
#
Because I preface that by saying, you know, I have a lot of friends who are in academia
#
and activism who think I'm a sellout or who don't like that I'm in the corporate world.
#
And they say, you know, likewise, I have a lot of friends, the corporate world, who are
#
very skeptical of people who are activists, right?
#
They'd say, Oh, those are those this or those that, or like, you know, academics or whatever.
#
They're very distressed, but the point is they're all my friends and they're all incredible
#
and they're all doing amazing work.
#
So you know, I think of Jogar resistance as like this thing that I do, which is, you know,
#
am I okay with the status quo?
#
Do I want to resist and create a better world, a better, you know, post pandemic, a better
#
new normal, a more inclusive new normal, all of that?
#
I have chosen to locate myself within the system, but within the system, how can I resist?
#
How can I kind of keep the door open and, and kind of have this build spaces for conversations
#
in which, you know, people from these multiple silos can hang out and maybe help each other.
#
So it's this kind of micro revolutions of change by placing oneself within the system.
#
One drawback of that is that everyone could dislike you, like, you know, the corporate
#
world would not trust you because they think, you know, at heart, you're an activist and
#
academic and activists and academics might not like you because they think you're from
#
But I found thankfully that the contrary is true.
#
I think if you tell everyone very honestly, this is who I am.
#
This is where I'm from, darling.
#
This is what I want to do.
#
They appreciate the honesty.
#
And thankfully, that's what I found over the past 10 years, at least the people appreciate
#
I'm saying, look, I'm not saying anything more.
#
I'm saying, this is me.
#
Here's what I want to do.
#
Let's try and do this together.
#
Does it have limitations?
#
I mean, that's which I acknowledge, right?
#
I even acknowledge in the book that I'm being permitted to do all of this and being allowed
#
And any given time, given that I operate within, you know, a framework, a structure, an institution
#
or a job, whatever, it could be found not useful.
#
So I understand that I am at the mercy of, you know, larger structural forces at play.
#
And I operate very much from this position of structural inequality, saying that I know
#
this is a system in which we work.
#
I know that there is maybe a toe hole that one has.
#
How can one use this toe hole to maybe make the world better is what I'm trying to do
#
And let's take a quick commercial break now.
#
And when we come back, we'll continue talking about, you know, your book.
#
And I promise I won't hold you up too much after that.
#
There will be no more tangential digressions as I am won't to indulge in.
#
So see you in a minute.
#
And I'm Amit Varma, here to tell you about a new weekly podcast that Vivek and I have
#
launched called Econ Central.
#
In Econ Central, we will help you make sense of the economic news of the last week.
#
And we'll also try to explain complex subjects in a simple language.
#
We will also take events outside the world of economics, like from politics, sports,
#
literature, and explain them through the lens of economic thinking.
#
Why is the stock market going up and the economy is going down?
#
What's the deal with high petrol prices?
#
Should we boycott Chinese goods?
#
What does free speech have to do with incentives?
#
Why are the roving bandits of Uttar Pradesh in competition with the biggest protection
#
racket out there, the Indian state?
#
All this and more in our new weekly podcast, Econ Central.
#
Econ Central launched a few weeks ago and is free on all podcast apps.
#
You can browse our archives at EconCentral.in.
#
Econ Central, you have an incentive to listen.
#
Don't forget the URL, EconCentral.in.
#
Welcome back to The Scene in the Unseen.
#
I'm chatting with Parmesh Shani about his amazing book, Kueristan, and indeed the journey
#
that sort of led him to your book.
#
Another phrase that really fascinated me in your book and got me to, you know, just stop
#
reading and think about it for a bit was a phrase, cultural acupuncture.
#
You know, tell me a bit about this.
#
So it's a phrase that I borrowed from the Harry Potter Alliance, you know, which is
#
incredible, which is, you know, Andrew Slack and the others founded it.
#
And it's a phrase that actually talks about, you know, using the framework of, you know,
#
popular culture to bring about social change.
#
So imagining the real world as like, you know, as one of these popular culture spaces, to
#
imagine the real world as, you know, as a Star Wars universe or as this Harry Potter
#
What would it mean for young people to create Dumbledore's army and bring about this change?
#
So there are so many young people across fans, fans, young people across the world who are
#
saying, can we create a Dumbledore's army to petition for trans rights or to petition
#
for a trans washroom in our school or college?
#
So using this popular imagination and a lot of young people are doing that in the recent
#
Hong Kong protests, you know, last year, you know, the Bruce Lee's, you know, still like
#
water imagery was used a lot.
#
And Henry Jenkins, my guru taught me about this phrase when he came to India, we hosted
#
him, he visited us and I kind of liked it.
#
I use it in a different context.
#
I use it, you know, I, when I use it in the book, I, you know, I honor the origin of the
#
phrase and I honor the Harry Potter Alliance from where it came, but I use it more to describe
#
the kind of experiments that I am doing.
#
So I told you earlier in the interview that, you know, I think, why do I think top down
#
approach might be good?
#
Because I think you need to know where to press, you need to know where to push to bring
#
And that's what acupuncture is.
#
You put the needle in at the right place, you know, the pain goes away or whatever.
#
And often you do it because you don't have resources to press everywhere.
#
You have a finite number of like, you know, things that you do.
#
You need to find out where to make that change.
#
So I use it to talk about the various points that I have pressed, both within Godrej and
#
outside, you know, within Godrej through the lab, but also through the other kinds of influence
#
that I wield, whether it is with senior leaders, whether it is with, you know, helping curate
#
things like the leadership forum, which is a meeting of senior leaders, or whether it
#
is as been in utilizing the Godrej platform to talk about change to other companies and
#
So I use it to describe my method of bringing about change by pressing at the right nodes.
#
And both these phrases come about early in the book because I really want to give readers
#
a sense of what I've been trying to do, but also leave them with a template because, you
#
know, I think of this book very much as my legacy.
#
And for all the young people who are reading it, I want them to read it and say, okay,
#
you know, maybe we can do this, right?
#
Because the people reading it can be, maybe some of them are in college, maybe some of
#
I want them to use this as a method and say, okay, so, you know, Parmesh could do this.
#
Maybe we can go to our principal and say, what about this?
#
And it's already happening.
#
Like, because Godrej has been talking about this and doing this, so many young HR people
#
I meet, tell me, you know, we told our boss, look, Godrej is doing this.
#
And also they said, okay, Godrej is doing this, we can also.
#
So, you know, they are using this in a way to kind of get the permissions ready to bring
#
about the changes that they want to bring about, so.
#
Another phrase in the book that I was struck by and that spoke to me was circulatory queerness.
#
And at one point you speak about the many notions of the self, and I want to read that
#
part out as well, where you say, in India, everything is inextricably tied to the idea
#
of family and community, and maybe that is where we can locate the hyphenation, and you
#
mean between Indian and queer.
#
And then you continue, quote, this Western post enlightenment idea of the self that needs
#
to be found, that we need to be the best version of ourselves, that life is a journey of discovering
#
and then polishing ourselves, is not so useful to us in India.
#
Here we are many selves, and there is no one self, and each of ourselves is conditional
#
and contextual, and as we spend our lives navigating these multiple selves, it is important
#
for workspaces to become crucibles of identity formation of some kind, stop quote.
#
And later on you elaborate on, you know, what it means when you say workplaces should become
#
crucibles of identity formation, which was again a sort of a new thought to me, where,
#
you know, you talk about how, you know, you spoke to an audience of Franklin Templeton
#
employees in Mumbai, and you address HR managers, and you said that, you know, think about who
#
your employees are, quote, someone who has been writing exams their whole life, maybe
#
they did well in class 10, and then in class 12, and then so on, you sort of line them
#
all up, G, IIT, MBA, IIM, whatever, and then you write, quote, when these young employees
#
come into your system, I told my Franklin Templeton audience, they are not fully developed,
#
they know how to mug up, write exams, and pass tests.
#
They often sacrificed a lot in their quest to emerge from the narrow end of the funnel
#
into your organization, and this includes sacrificing thinking of things such as their
#
own identity, or what makes them happy, or gives them purpose in life.
#
Your workspace needs to welcome them to explore their multiple selves.
#
You need to reassure them that it is okay to be who they are here, that they can engage
#
with the identities that they often tend to suppress at home.
#
As a consequence, an Indian corporate structure for an Indian LGBTQ person must be a space
#
for reconciliation, stop quote.
#
And this is a fascinating message, and it's also sort of a fascinating message in the
#
sense that I think many companies, when you talk about LGBTQ rights, would respond to
#
it from a perspective of, okay, it makes sense, we should not discriminate against them.
#
But what you are saying here is that, no, that is not enough, that there is more that
#
So expand a little bit on that kind of thinking, and how receptive have corporates been to
#
I think corporates have been incredibly receptive, because this is also linking to another theme
#
in the book, which is all about family, right?
#
So large parts of the book about personal families, then families of choice, right?
#
Personal families when your own parents accept you.
#
Families of choice are the families that you create.
#
So hijraf households are often families of choice, where you create family-like structures
#
to either compensate for or to supplement the love that you get from your birth families.
#
And then I actually say that workplaces have to act like families.
#
So I think it is very Indian in this sense of saying that your workplace has to be a
#
space for reconciliation, because in so many other countries, you come out first at home,
#
and then you go to this workplace as this kind of well-formed or whatever individual.
#
But in India, because of that passage you read out, right, and that is the experience
#
Anyway, where we talk about happiness, love, purpose, identity in our houses, forget sex
#
or gender or like any of that, right, where we talk about these things.
#
So people are really, really, really, really need these spaces.
#
And this comes out of the hundreds of talks I've done on college campuses and in offices,
#
right, when people come up to you and they tell you that it's the first time they're
#
hearing about something like this.
#
Now, if you're 24, 25, and it's the first time you're hearing about something like this,
#
I just feel like, you know, what have you, how have you spent the rest of your life?
#
You've not thought about something fundamental to who you are.
#
So I think the workplace has to be that.
#
And people understand, because that's the other thing when people who run companies,
#
people who are in HR departments are also human beings, they've gone through the same
#
So when you appeal to that inner humanness, when you say, look, you have families at home,
#
right, you have children at home, you have this, we need to act like good.
#
What does it mean for you to be a good parent to your children at home?
#
Can we not be good parents to our employees?
#
Given that this is the context?
#
I mean, more often than not, I have found people getting it and saying, okay, what would
#
Then of course, it's, it's, I mean, it's manifested in multiple ways and policy changes
#
and you know, and so on.
#
And then there are other challenges that come up.
#
How do you translate all this intent into practice?
#
But I think at a fundamental level, which is why this is such a desi book, when you
#
argue on this terms, it's very hard for people to not understand.
#
And what I've done in the book is I've covered all grounds.
#
I've argued on a money term.
#
I've said, it makes you more money.
#
I've argued on an innovation term.
#
Not just me saying, there's data that backs it.
#
I've argued on the talent term.
#
But above all, I'm saying, it's in our culture, we need to be like this, we need to act like
#
And I made a pretty watertight case in terms of whichever way you look at it, whatever
#
aspect of your mind or heart you want to be appealed to.
#
I think the book serves that purpose that, you know, it shows very clearly there's no
#
reason to be not inclusive.
#
No, and in fact, it kind of you have a chapter on how queerness is ingrained in our history,
#
whether we are talking about ancient times or medieval times from a Hindu perspective
#
or medieval times from an Islamic perspective all the way to the modern day.
#
And that kind of leaves me baffled because then there is that paradox that on the one
#
hand in our society, we have so much homophobia or often just ignorance, while actually, you
#
know, these modes of behavior and these modes of living have been ingrained in our society
#
for way longer than before.
#
You know, the West came up with words for it, like homosexuality or queerness or whatever.
#
You know, and this dichotomy to me just sinking allowed extends much beyond this.
#
It is, you know, I was once chatting with the politician JP Narayan about our society
#
and I described India as an illiberal society.
#
And my reason for saying that, of course, was the way we treat our women and caste and
#
And he pointed out that from another point of view, we are a deeply liberal society because,
#
you know, it's so inclusive in terms of cultural influences, all our food, all our clothing,
#
we take influences from everywhere and we make them our own.
#
We are a khichri of our nation.
#
You know, I struggle to wrap my head around this paradox and this dichotomy.
#
What do you think of it?
#
I've also struggled to wrap my head around it, which is why one way of writing this book
#
has been to unravel some of this.
#
But my position is very clear that, I mean, I've written this book to unravel, but also,
#
I mean, the purpose of this book is very much to serve as a manual for change, right?
#
So try to make it like simple and in that sense, very clear, understanding the paradoxes,
#
but simplifying it to a point of look.
#
I mean, it's very clear, right?
#
It's in our family values, our family values are to include.
#
Plus, there's all these other benefits, it makes you money, it makes you this, it makes
#
So net-net, it's good for you, whichever way you look at it.
#
I've not found one reason in my years of research that says that discriminating against someone
#
Here are all the reasons that it's good for you.
#
I've not found any reason why it might be bad for you.
#
So people seem to get it.
#
I think a lot of the times there's so much noise.
#
People kind of get distracted by the noise, right?
#
So a lot of noise comes, this is against our culture, but when you say actually, no, no,
#
let me show you how it's in our culture, oh yeah, it is in our culture.
#
Which is why I think the work of, whether it's scholars like Ruth Vanita and Salim
#
Kidwai, or writers like Devdutt Patnayak, who have popularized mythology so much over
#
the years, right, is so vital.
#
Because in a way, you know, Devdutt's, in his writing, I mean, whether it's very directly
#
in a shikhandi, and other stories they don't tell you, or indirectly in, I would say most
#
of Devdutt's other works, is about equality, plurality, inclusiveness, widening one's horizon
#
about the idea of India, and recognizing that a lot of this, right, even Ruth and Salim
#
write in, you know, the same sex love in India, that homophobia is not, is something that
#
was imported into India with the British.
#
And you know, they left 70 years ago, it's, I find it tragic that, you know, homophobia
#
I think it's time we sent it off packing as well, and maybe we can get the Kohino diamond
#
You know, take, take, take, take your homophobia back and give us back our diamond.
#
I completely agree with you about giving homophobia away, but the ghar vaapsi of the Kohino diamond
#
I think is unnecessary.
#
I have the perfect setting for it, Dalit.
#
Yeah, you know, that would be even more visualization, as you say, for your audiences, if you wear
#
the Kohino diamond on stage.
#
Let's move on to another fascinating section on your book, the third of five parts where
#
you in a series of different chapters, you lay out different aspects of the case for
#
inclusion and you begin it with a chapter on the meta issues.
#
And I really like that because it struck me that the case for inclusion can be made through
#
two different prisms, just as I have always thought about the case for individual freedom.
#
Like I've always argued that you can make a case for individual freedom on purely moral
#
terms, deontological terms, where you say that it is good in and of itself.
#
You have to respect individual autonomy and consent and all of that.
#
But you can also make the case for individual freedom, whether in the marketplace or the
#
bedroom from a consequentialist point of view and say that it's not just better for the
#
individuals involved, but for society as a whole, if all of us are, you know, free to
#
express ourselves and to live our lives as we please, provided we don't infringe the
#
Now, so the case can be made both ways.
#
And it's often a strategic choice that if you are making the case, which way do you
#
And you've spoken about the same sort of dilemma about making the case for inclusion, where
#
you end up making it in, you know, three excellent chapters in consequentialist terms by pointing
#
out that companies in their self-interest should be inclusive because, you know, ABC,
#
And of course, you also point out the moral case for it.
#
And you discuss a dialogue with a friend of yours who was saying, no, it should only be
#
The rest of it may change with fashion and all of that.
#
And I actually agree with you on this and not so much with your friend, because I think
#
that even though individuals, you know, you can appeal to their sense of morality, companies
#
are finally a moral beast.
#
So appealing to that kind of self-interest of this will make us more money.
#
This will get us better employees is a good case to make, especially since as you've shared
#
in the book and, you know, I've also spoken about elsewhere, there is so much data to
#
back up the benefits of diversity.
#
But tell me a bit about each of those three cases that you make for why corporations should
#
be inclusive and should, you know, go out of their way to be LGBTQ friendly.
#
Yeah, so I, and you know, I told you earlier, I'm a maximalist.
#
So why do one when you can buy one argument when you can have four.
#
And I'm glad you're coming to this side of the spectrum, Amit, with like, you know, minimalistic
#
arguments are pointless.
#
I'm happy that over the course of this podcast, I have taken you a little bit into excess.
#
So I think and that initial thing is very important, right?
#
Because this is also, I mean, this is a moral, it's a moral dilemma for inclusion advocates
#
all over the world, right?
#
Saying that this is deeply personal.
#
Queer people are four to 6% of the population.
#
But even morally, even if there's just one queer person in the world, it should be inclusive.
#
And if you base it on business and so on, then you are in a sense, are you diminishing
#
the moral case for it and so on.
#
But over the years, I mean, people are recognizing that, you know, I've anyway never believed
#
in either or kind of things, I've always been a big advocate of both.
#
So I think, I mean, this fits in very much with that.
#
And I this is what I was seeing on the ground.
#
So I put in, I made the case for it on all these terms, because I was seeing all these
#
terms play themselves out on the ground that there is a clear moral case for inclusion,
#
you know, which I've laid out from a human rights or just from whatever a decency perspective,
#
I mean, it's a no brainer.
#
Should we be decent to everyone and treat everyone the same?
#
And how novel and radical that I have to have a whole chapter in the book telling people
#
why decency is a good thing.
#
Having said that, the other things I thought were very important, because, you know, we
#
don't have data out of India as such, but there is enough data coming from other parts
#
of the world that tell you that make very direct links between profitability, you know,
#
both the company's profitability and the level of the inclusion, as well as, you know, things
#
like GDP, the economy, and so on, just to give you some numbers, the market size of
#
India's queer economy is about 200 billion dollars with a B. And this is assuming, you
#
know, four to 10% of the population is queer.
#
Who wants a piece of that queer market?
#
I know I do, working in a company.
#
Certainly so many others, so many of your podcast listeners who are corporate people
#
will say, hey, we want a bit of this market.
#
So one way of getting it is by being inclusive, you know, to your queer employees, present
#
and future, to your customers, indicating to your customers that this is what you stand
#
And as we have shown with other companies, you know, you will support it.
#
And there's enough case studies about this, whether it's Subaru in the West or like Lalit
#
Hotels or whatever in India and so on, right?
#
Companies that stand up for what they believe in make more money.
#
Likewise, I mean, the World Bank did this incredible report in 2014, which looked at
#
the cost of homophobia.
#
And Lee Badgett, who authored this, has gone on record to say that the number that she
#
initially thought of, which was 32 billion dollars is the cost of homophobia in India
#
for that year, which was 2012, is a conservative number, which means and that year, 32 billion
#
dollars was about one percent of the GDP that year.
#
And so the World Bank and Lee Badgett's case was that if India had been more inclusive
#
that year, they'd have got a bump of GDP bump of one percent.
#
That is huge, which finance minister does not want this GDP bump of one percent, right?
#
I mean, I think it would be very prudent for people to understand these studies and the
#
direct links as so many other countries have done and so many other cities have done and
#
Then the second case is a link between innovation and being inclusive.
#
And this, I mean, it should be a no brainer.
#
But you know, when there are people making decisions, when everyone around the table
#
looks the same and sounds the same, it's very hard to be innovative because you are thinking
#
about life from your perspective, right?
#
If there are 10 people around the table working on the design of a sanitary napkin for the
#
future, it's going to be and they all happen to be, you know, male, it would be very hard.
#
The design would be much better if you widen that to include even one woman in that group
#
because, you know, she'll say, well, you know, being being a woman as someone who might have
#
used this product, can I just tell you this, this, this, right, and then your product becomes
#
better, whatever, right?
#
Would it be better if you had two?
#
Then a range of other and so on.
#
So basic example, but just to say that, you know, the more diverse teams you have and
#
diversities across various pillars, gender is one, ability is one.
#
If you have PWDs on your team, you can help imagine better things.
#
If you have people who might be LGBT on your team, it might be better.
#
This is an important pillar of diversity in our country as well.
#
And so many other, you know, frameworks, religion, caste, age, so many of these other things,
#
right, which are different pillars of diversity.
#
And there is enough research that now shows that companies that have more diverse teams
#
innovate better, their products do better in the market and they have better outcomes,
#
which eventually leads to more money.
#
So even the innovation case is very, very clear.
#
You know, the more innovative you are, the better you will do, the more money you will
#
In fact, I've spoken in past episodes about studies which show that the most important
#
factor in good decision making is not IQ or education or any of those things.
#
It's diversity because you just have so many different viewpoints coming in that there
#
will be people thinking out of your box, not necessarily out of the box, but out of your
#
And it's important to have that for its own sake, which doesn't mean that, you know,
#
you value diversity over any of these other attributes necessarily.
#
But I would say the way I would interpret it is that whenever you can choose between
#
two equal candidates, choose the one who will, you know, improve your diversity.
#
And ultimately, that affects the bottom line.
#
And as you point out, so many studies have shown.
#
And that's what positive discrimination essentially is, right?
#
To say that how can you widen your, you know, your pool of talent to reflect the world outside
#
because people, I mean, your employees, your customers, other stakeholders are living in
#
this world outside in which they are witnessing diversity.
#
So in any society, four to 10% of people are queer, there are disabled people and there
#
are people of color, you know, it's such a, why is that diversity not being reflected
#
I mean, that's the question, right?
#
And if that diversity was reflected in workplaces, if you had workplaces which are more reflective
#
of the world that we are living in, you know, it would be better.
#
I mean, it's not rocket science.
#
It's actually quite simple, right?
#
And this is not true of just a corporate level.
#
It's true of cities and countries.
#
So Richard Florida, you know, has done work now for about 15, 20 years on cities.
#
And he wrote this incredible book called The Rise of the Creative Class some years ago,
#
which made a direct correlation between, you know, cities and their productivity and the
#
And he had certain parameters which he looked at that linked the cities competitive index.
#
And one of which was that is the city more inclusive to LGBTQ people?
#
And since then, the work has expanded to look at countries, to look at regions and so on.
#
And in every case, it's very, very clear at a city level, at a region level, at a state
#
level, at a country level.
#
If you are more inclusive, you do better and you in every way, including financially, right?
#
So even say in the U.S., right, other parts of the U.S. might be having recessions.
#
But you know, certain regions, right, whether it's San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York, etc.,
#
are thriving because they have been so inclusive in so many ways that talent gravitates over
#
Innovative ideas come from there.
#
Innovative ideas come from there.
#
It benefits the economy and things like that, right?
#
So there are so many countries like Chile who started Startup Chile programs welcoming
#
innovative people into their country, you know, countries like Israel, Chile and all
#
have made innovation like one of the key things that they want to import talent because they
#
recognize that the future of their countries is going to be based on the talent that they
#
And if you want to attract global talent, you have to be the kind of society that global
#
talent will want to navigate, gravitate towards, right?
#
So I mean, that's, you know, on innovation on multiple levels.
#
And I also write in the chapter about how we want to preserve our talent.
#
And one of the say in the IIT petition, for example, in the 2018, you know, hearing, so
#
many of the IIT students had said that, you know, they were considering so many of their,
#
you know, former IIT graduates had already migrated to countries like Canada, etc.
#
Not for anything else, but other that they did not feel comfortable living in India at
#
So my question is, why should our best talent be migrating away to other queer friendly
#
Why don't we create a queer friendly environment so that because we have spent our taxpayer
#
money into educating all these IIT students, it's our money, it's gone into educating
#
them and they want to leave and go to other parts of the world because those parts are
#
Why don't we just create a more queer friendly environment so our talent can remain here
#
and then add to the innovation, potential and output of our economy.
#
So this bit is a little nationalistic, but I mean, you know, it makes sense, right?
#
I mean, we want so from every perspective that you look at, I mean, you know, the link
#
between innovation and inclusion is very clear.
#
And then finally, I go on into, you know, into talent, into reputation, talking about
#
millennials and gen Z's and how in today's world, you know, it is a reputation economy
#
and how young people really, really want to either buy products from or work at companies
#
that are standing up and doing the right thing.
#
And for them, caring for the environment, caring for, you know, thinking about diversity
#
And, you know, there are a bunch of things which are the right thing.
#
So, you know, I mean, those, these are the pillars on which I make my argument.
#
There are three basic pillars, one is that it will directly lead you to profit, two is
#
that it will attract innovative people.
#
And as you point out in that chapter on, you know, attracting innovative people, it creates
#
a virtuous cycle because once you have innovation and inclusion within a company, you know,
#
more and more people will want to work in that place, not just LGBTQ people, but people
#
who just like that openness and the sort of the innovation that happens from there.
#
I mean, again, personal flashback came here, I remember when I sort of graduated from college
#
in 94, I worked for a year in advertising in Delhi.
#
And then I moved to Bombay to work at Channel V. I just gave up my job and I just landed
#
Because I saw so much creativity coming out of there at the time, like if you remember
#
Quick Gun, Oregon, and so on.
#
And of course, I didn't create anything remotely that creative, which is entirely to do with
#
me and not to do with Channel V. But and later on, I remember when I was working at Cricket
#
4 in the early 2000s, and there was so much great cricket writing that automatically,
#
you know, once you established yourself as a place where there is good writing happening,
#
anybody who wanted to write like that would gravitate towards you and you know, we became
#
a magnet for young writing talent, many of whom have gone on to do great writing apart
#
So that's a great point.
#
And your third point was about just the reputational benefits that, you know, if you have that
#
warm fuzzy feeling about a company or even at an intellectual level, a sense of admiration
#
for what they're doing, you are more likely to buy their products like again, contextualizing
#
I remember a few years ago, I went to Costa once and I said something to the waiter and
#
he couldn't hear me and then I realized that they're hiring, you know, deaf and dumb staff
#
and you know, as a company policy and immediately then that increases your loyalty to that particular
#
place because you're like that, you know, wow, this is, you know, and so those knock
#
on benefits also, you know, are there.
#
Now let's kind of move on to, you know, the fourth section of your book is a fascinating
#
five step guide for what companies can do for, you know, having, now that you've sold
#
them the case that inclusion is good for you, how do they become inclusive and you've got
#
So can you take us through, you know, some of the points that you've kind of raised in
#
Well, I do want them to buy the book also.
#
So I don't want to take them through so many points that they don't buy the book.
#
But I briefly, we are running out of time anyway.
#
So we'll cover briefly.
#
I mean, this is, think of this as the tasting menu, not the main course.
#
And you know, the main course is very good.
#
I think, I think, you know, even the subjects that we have discussed, you know, we have
#
just touched the surface of it and people really have to buy the book to get a full
#
sense of the depth of the arguments and the data presented.
#
So I think that was without saying, I don't worry about that.
#
My listeners, buy books.
#
I'm so glad you can feel free to buy it in all formats, the paper book, there's a Kindle
#
So you can buy it in all formats.
#
Now, having not just that, buy multiple copies and give it to people who you think they need
#
It's a perfect gift for anything, whichever festival is coming up, you know, the picture
#
of you and it is like almost besides a bow tie.
#
It's a very boring, corporatish picture.
#
What to do, in this line, you have to do this too, I have to look a little serious.
#
Yeah, but next edition, we'll do something more flamboyant.
#
So just to give you an overview of in terms of the different sections, I mean, in terms
#
of it starts with basic policies that one can change right from having an anti-discrimination
#
And I make it very easy.
#
I give you the good ridge, a large part of the book.
#
Okay, here's what we have at Godridge, copy and paste it.
#
Because a lot of people who are reading it might say, oh, now we don't know how to make
#
It's there, you know, use it.
#
So what is an anti-discrimination policy?
#
I tell you, I say you can use this.
#
What does it mean to have, you know, a more comprehensive posh policy?
#
So a lot of policies and benefits, what are benefits, same sex partnership benefits, here
#
is what they are and this is what we offer gender affirmation, surgery and benefits.
#
This is, you know, so all the early, the first step is just, you know, having all of this
#
And then I also say, don't have it and do it quietly, right?
#
You must make some noise about it so that people know now having the policies and benefits
#
in place doesn't mean that tomorrow, like hundreds of people will come out and start
#
Because people are not closeted because you don't, people are closeted because of various
#
So you might have the best policies and benefits, but you might not have a culture of inclusion.
#
So people might want to avail of it, but they might be afraid if I come out, will my boss
#
treat me differently or will my co-workers and will my dad, right?
#
So you have to supplement your policy and benefits with a whole bunch of other things.
#
And so all those other steps are about these other things, like what does it mean to sensitize
#
How are the different ways you can sensitize?
#
And I show people, whether through workshops, whether through round tables, whether through
#
carnivals, what does sensitization mean?
#
How do you go out and actively recruit LGBTQ people?
#
Because now there's an ecosystem.
#
Say you want to be LGBTQ friendly and you know, you want to say, okay, I'm sure I have
#
queer employees, I'm going to do all of this, but I'd like to attract more queer talent.
#
Now there's a whole, there are consulting companies, there are job fairs, there's so
#
much that you can do, including basic things, like even just signaling.
#
This is what Ali Portia from McKinsey told me.
#
You can put even all your posts on okri.com.
#
You know, even if you just put one rainbow around it, the queer people who are reading
#
it will understand, oh, they're queer friendly, maybe I can apply, whatever.
#
You don't have to say they're queer friendly.
#
Basic signaling also goes a long way, right?
#
So it tells you about how you can, you know, participate and create this.
#
There's a specific chapter on, on all the things that you have to be careful and mindful
#
about when you are reaching out to trans employees, because trans employees have a unique set
#
And so as a company, you have to be more sensitive, basic stuff, right?
#
A trans person might have a 10 standard school leaving certificate with one gender and might
#
have transitioned to something else.
#
So you have to tell your HR department key, please don't create difficulties and say,
#
but your school day leaving certificate says mister, and now you are miss and all that
#
you have to understand and you have to accept and you have to say, fine, we accept this
#
certificate and we accept this also like that.
#
There are so many other things that we spoke about Kochi Metro earlier and saying how you
#
might have to help with housing, opening bank accounts, so many other things, right?
#
The other thing is with trans people often because of systematic discrimination, levels
#
of education might not be so high.
#
So when you are, if you're serious about hiring trans people, you might want to do a combination
#
of skill building and training and hiring, which is what, you know, ANZ and so many of
#
these other banks have done to great success.
#
You know, working with community organizations, doing a skill building workshop for six weeks
#
and you know, then the 25 trans people who attended the skill building workshops, the
#
ones that do well get absorbed into the company and the ones that the company does not want
#
gives they are given certificates and you know, then they have a better chance of working
#
with other companies and so on.
#
So I mean, it's a useful chapter in that sense.
#
So I end by talking about how if you really want to go the whole hog, then you have to
#
really talk about it to the world because you know, I personally don't think being in,
#
I mean, you know, I think it's everyone's choice, but I think you shouldn't be a closeted
#
company also because in the words of the famous Rakhi Sawan, jo dikta hai wo bikta hai.
#
So if you are being inclusive, why not tell the world about it and show it to the world
#
and get the love and appreciation that the world will give you for it.
#
So don't be closeted, talk about it at public forums, visibly support queer culture by sponsoring
#
film festivals, you know, literature festivals, pride matches, whatever it takes, support
#
your employees and they want to go on things like that.
#
Get community organizations through your CSR in whatever way you can.
#
Just be an out and proud ally because you know, the love and affection and market share
#
and everything else that you will get in it is far greater than you will put in it.
#
That I can guarantee you.
#
So you know, it's a multiple step approach.
#
I hope everyone who reads it follows all the steps.
#
You know, you are the first person on my show to quote Rakhi Sawan as a management guru.
#
I have two final questions for you.
#
My penultimate question is this, that what we often see in social movements is that sometimes
#
a cause can be hurt by radical fringes and there is a danger of going too far.
#
For example, you know, you've spoken very wisely of the many cells within us that our
#
identity is not just focused around, you know, one aspect, but various aspects and they all
#
But it strikes me that, you know, this deep focus on, you know, particular strands of
#
our identity can sometimes get reductive, you know, if you focus too hard on it and
#
you build these narratives of oppression and victimhood and so on.
#
And I think they don't have enough respect for individual complexity and individual autonomy
#
and those can get eroded where you just, you know, once you embrace that narrative of yourself
#
as a victim, you might be condemning yourself to a perpetual feeling of victimhood, which
#
And, you know, which is something that one could otherwise get across.
#
Now, you know, without sort of getting into specifics, is this something that you think
#
I mean, even within this movement, of course, it's one thing that there are many differences,
#
but those differences get, you know, more and more heated over time.
#
You know, just a few months ago, JK Rowling would have been considered such an ally of
#
the movement and then there was this, you know, vociferous backlash against her and
#
she was called transphobic and all of that without getting into the merits of the case
#
Is that perhaps an issue of too much zealotry here and also of the reductiveness, which
#
is kind of dangerous where you only see yourself as X without accepting that we all contain
#
the whole alphabet within us to varying degrees?
#
So very briefly, yes, I think off late and, you know, certainly social media, etc. have
#
amplified a lot of it has been very easy for a lot of people to take positions and it's
#
If you look at the nature of our television, if you look at the overall toxicity, not just
#
in India, all over the world, I would say, in terms of, you know, position taking and
#
attacking the other and so on.
#
So I think it's very easy to lose out on nuance.
#
It's very easy to, it's much easier for people to look at what the differences between each
#
other than what unites us commonly and certainly within the queer movement we have seen in
#
India and other parts of the world.
#
It's easier to like have differences than to say that, you know, we are under one common
#
I'm not, one can recognize that one is under one common umbrella and still recognize the
#
issues with it, with that umbrella, right?
#
I've always said, I think the queer movement really, we also need to deeply reflect.
#
And this book is also a call to the queer movement to ask ourselves, what histories
#
Whose histories are we telling?
#
But having said that, I'm given that at least, you know, this book in this book is very much
#
set in business and it's very much a call to action and it's an action oriented book.
#
I like what Devdutt calls samvad, not vivad.
#
So I like conversations, not confrontations.
#
I am very okay with disagreements.
#
You know, I think the world would be very boring without disagreements, but I like disagreements
#
that are respectful and, you know, we don't always have to agree on, you know, each other's
#
So you won't stop talking to me just because I don't like Shah Rukh?
#
No, I mean, will I try overtly and covertly to influence you to become a Shah Rukh fan?
#
But that is samvad, no, I mean, I won't say you like Shah Rukh, I was like, no, okay,
#
It's an underrated gem.
#
Maybe you'll like Shah Rukh after that, right?
#
And even if you don't, if you don't, then I would say, okay, you're missing out a lot.
#
Maybe we can find something else to bond over.
#
See, but my aim, that's my thing, right?
#
I mean, so even with this book, right, the aim is very much to get people to hire more
#
I mean, if the book has been written as a manifesto to get people to understand that
#
queer people matter, we need jobs, we need recognitions, we need equality, and with that
#
stated aim in mind, I think samvad is a better answer within the movement and outside.
#
Because when you do samvad, you always leave the door open for possibilities.
#
I think more and more when we do vivad, we shut those doors.
#
And I think where the world is going, the more doors we open, the more bridges we build,
#
And I would just add to that by saying that I found your book such a wonderful read that
#
I think either of those terms memoir and manifesto, or even both of them together, don't do justice
#
So I recommend everybody pick it up and read it, even if you feel that, hey, this subject
#
doesn't interest me, I'm not LGBTQ, why should I read this?
#
Even then, it will open your eyes to the world around us and a lot of it is just universal,
#
like so many passages within it spoke so intimately to me, like what you wrote about many selves
#
For a final question, I'll turn away from the book and back to you, you know, I'm sorry.
#
This is a virtual, this thing, I could give you a virtual hamper, you know, what is from
#
the show, sir, I am humble person, I am not Kjo, I am Eva, Eva sounds good, actually.
#
Okay, so I watched this interview of yours from 10 years ago on this excellent series
#
called project Bolo, all these links will be in the show notes, by the way, so please
#
So the excellent series called project Bolo, which had conversations with various people
#
from within the movement about their lived experiences and so on, and in that interview
#
of yours, you know, this quote struck me and this was 10 years ago, so I asked you about
#
it today and you said, I want to live in interesting times, stop quote.
#
And now that you know, the preceding 10 years have certainly included many interesting times
#
and I'm going to end this show with my staple question to all my guests that looking ahead,
#
maybe just looking ahead 10 years and not too much, what gives you hope and what gives
#
What gives me hope are all the young people that I have met on this journey, the world,
#
the future of the world, not just the queer movement in India belongs to the young.
#
And whether it is young queer people, you know, I write in this book about this incredible
#
young poet in Jabalpur, who is out to his family and whose father buys him mascara very
#
normally, you know, to this wonderful lesbian couple I met in Lucknow, we're living a very
#
happy life together, to the young founders of these brilliant, you know, intersectional
#
queer spaces across the country, whether it's Yaol in Manipur, Zookia in Assam, Queerabad
#
in Ahmedabad, you know, Queer Alliance, there's so many, right, there's Awadh Queer Festival,
#
like there's so many festivals, organizations, places, things, Chinky Homo project out of
#
Delhi that addresses Northeast, I spoke about Grace Banu already and a bond of interest,
#
you know, Pink List, which is at the intersection of political activism and queerness.
#
You know, I just, you know, there's a whole list and I end the book with about 200 of
#
these organizations, Dalit Queer Project, Queer Muslim Project, all of which are looking
#
at various aspects of queerness. So what gives me hope are these incredible young rainbow
#
warriors, striving to really not just imagine people like Yuthi Chand, right, who have come
#
out, who are out and proud and running for the country, people like Narthaki Natraj was
#
honored by the present government with the Padma Bhushan, you know, for as the first
#
transgender, I think that the first transgender dancer to win this award, so many state governments,
#
I would say, across the country, who are recognizing that inclusion is an imperative and are slowly
#
building the networks for it, whether through welfare boards, like, you know, Maharashtra,
#
Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and so on, or other initiatives. So I mean, what gives me hope are these young
#
incredible changemakers who are, in a sense, pushing everyone around them to imagine, to
#
create and to live in this, you know, tomorrow, which I've called with great love and affection
#
Queeristan. What scares me is that our present generation might disappoint them. You know,
#
the passion and the power of their dreams, and the interconnected equal world that this
#
tomorrow's generation is imagining is so strong and so beautiful. And I really wish and hope
#
that some of us who are running the world today, either join these tomorrow's queer,
#
you know, action superstars, or step out of the way, but not get into their way. So that
#
is what gives me, you know, that is my fear.
#
Your words of hope are very inspiring. But I have to say that, you know, your words of
#
despair are a bit overstated, because I don't think you'll disappoint anybody with this
#
wonderful, remarkable book, which I think will be read for hopefully decades from now.
#
Parmesh, thank you so much for coming on my show. It was so good to catch up with you
#
Thank you. And it was exactly three hours. So it's perfect. It's the length of a wonderful,
#
old style Bollywood film with Shah Rukh Khan.
#
See, I know now that if you compare me with Shah Rukh Khan, Shah Rukh is winning. So this
#
is but you know, thanks a lot. I'm going to go and, you know, search for Paheli now and
#
watch it just out of respect for you, Parmesh.
#
Thank you. And to everyone who's listening. Thank you so much. Lots and lots of love.
#
If you enjoyed listening to the show, do check out my show notes for links to much of what
#
we discussed today. These include links to Parmesh's wonderful books, Queeristan and
#
Gay Bombay. Do pick them up. And if you like them, do give them to friends who you think
#
might appreciate them. You can follow Parmesh on Twitter at Parmesh S. You can follow me
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at Amit Verma, A-M-I-T-B-A-R-M-A. You can browse past episodes of The Scene on the Unseen
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at sceneunseen.in. Thank you for listening.
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