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Wanted: CEOs from India

: Don’t be misled — the Bombay in this book is not one most of you are familiar with. Nor is the creator of this world easy to slot. Parmesh Shahani works on “venture capital, innovation and strategic brand outreach” in the city’s corporate world, but is as comfortable locating his identity as a gay man in this ethnoscape. Not surprisingly, his first book, Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)longing in Contemporary India, can be read as a comment on the way Indians have embraced the various subcultures that have existed in the country. Using thoeretical constructs, he examines the cultural dimensions through intersecting scapes — ethnoscape, financescape, mediascape, technoscape, politiscape, memoryscape and ideoscape — to arrive at how “various Indian historical traditions continued to flourish along with the reformulated modernity”. Suman Tarafdar attempts to understand this emerging India as seen through the gay prism in a conversation with the author. Excerpts.

Interestingly, you explore the changing mores of Indian-ness in the book. Was that a conscious decision while structuring the book?

The book talks about Indian-ness. If India is shining, the world is realises that India is big on innovations. And can do it simply, less expensively. The book attempts to map out gayness in India and understand core ideas of citizenship by studying trends in its economy, polity, society, culture and institutions.

Does Gay Bombay help in this?

Gay Bombay is as much an online website as a fluid community. Sexuality provides an interesting lens to examine changes happening in India — the economic surge, the higher political profile, the cultural explosion on the world stage and a new and assertive confidence in its own capability as a major world power. I am really interlinked in contemporary urban India and my goal was also to answer what it means to be an Indian in contemporary India.

Despite Article 377, do you see the post liberalisation years as being better for social acceptance of gays in India?

Absolutely. Real changes are happening in spaces like offices. Colleagues are now far more accommodating of co-workers. Legal changes are awaited, but friends are changing every day. It’s important to tell the good stuff as well.

How does the gay man in India find himself vis-à-vis his family today?