Ally Nation

A decade after Gay Bombay made a splash, and two years after Section 377 was read down, LGBTQ+ icon Parmesh Shahani casts a queer eye on the ergonomic route to inclusivity

- NIDHI GUPTA

In 2018, Parmesh Shahani got a phone call from the graphic novelist Vishwajyoti Ghosh (Delhi Calm). After professing admiration for his work, Ghosh suggested that Shahani write a book collecting all his experience, especially in the corporate set-up. Shahani, who had recently put out a “white paper on transgender employment”, co-written with a Godrej India Culture Lab colleague Nayanika Nambiar, was introduced to Westland’s “legendary publisher” Karthika VK. Their meeting “took place inside the very noisy Kitty Su in Delhi, during which Karthika and I bonded while watching Maya the Drag Queen shake to ‘Dreamum Wakeupum’. By the end of that evening, I knew that I wanted to do this book with her.”

Two years later, Shahani feels that Queeristan: LGBTQ Inclusion In The Workplace has become even more vital as we collectively navigate through a pandemic. “A lot of people are calling this the ‘new normal’,” he says, “which is great because the old normal was not okay. We must endeavour to create a more equitable new normal, one in which inclusion is imperative, not garnish.”

In the book, Shahani plates advice and “win-win solutions” from his personal experience at Godrej for employers to adopt at their own workplaces. And from his vantage point as an activist and chronicler of India’s queer movement, he documents the ebb and flow of legal and social changes. Excerpts from an interview:

What did you want this book to be when you started out?