Favorite Lecture: Re-Imagining a Queer Future by Anahita Sarabhai

My favorite lecture was called “Re-imagining a Queer Future: Creating Movements in a hesitant Gujarat” by Anahita Sarabhai. In this lecture, Anahita detailed her experiences as a queer person in India, where homosexuality was illegal until 2018. She first told her story of coming out as a lesbian when she was 11, only knowing the term ‘lesbian’ from the dictionary because it had never been directly taught. She then shared the experience of going to Sarah Lawrence college in America, a college in which being queer is not unusual, only to come back to her home country where citizens were only queer in secret. After finding Ahmedabad’s secret LGBT+ communities insufficient to represent the population, she founded Queerabad, a group with the aim of giving LGBT+ people a place to express themselves openly. I have been interested in LGBT+ issues for many years, so I was excited that this lecture was scheduled even before I attended. I particularly enjoyed Anahita’s lecture because I thought her courage to be openly queer in a society that condoned it was inspiring and it was interesting to compare the two places I have lived, California (where being openly queer is ~relatively~ accepted) and Ohio (where being openly queer typically comes with bullying and poor treatment), to India (where being openly queer could result in a prison sentence until last year). I thought it was particularly nice talking to Anahita because she had also lived in the US and had those comparative experiences as well.