Gay Pride in India Inc
The Modern Rationalist|October 2020
Book: Queeristan Author: Parmesh Shahani
Chintan Girish Modi
Gay Pride in India Inc

Publisher: Westland Pages: 320

Price: Rs. 699

Parmesh Shahani’s new book, Queeristan: LGBTQ 1nclusion in the Indian Workplace has all the ingredients of a Bollywood blockbuster. There is a strong emotional core with dramatic tension, foreign locations, background music and special appearances. A cross between memoir and manifesto, it is best described in the author’s own words: “How did a boy from Colaba who grew up in a 250- squarefoot room and went to a 7- rupees-a. month SSC school — St. Joseph’s. Colaba— land up with a let-set business-class lifestyle that involves crossing from Mumbai to Boston to Vancouver in one effing week?”

This business book is not a yawn-inducing volume stuffed with facts and figures alone. It is written in a lively manner that make readers laugh and weep as they learn about the author’s journey as an out and proud gay man with a wide-ranging career as “entrepreneur, venture capitalist, fashionista, author, culture curator and LGBTQ change-maker. “He serves as vice president at Godrej Industries Ltd and heads the Godrej India Culture Lab, which is described as “a fluid experimental space that cross-pollinates ideas and people to explore what it means to be modern and Indian.”

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