The screening of Engayging Lives

Tonight, I'm going with a bunch of my wonderful colleagues and M-man (my date) to watch the screening of Engayging Lives, the documentary about urban openly gay people. Of course, the title is based on my blog and I have contributed the soundtrack to it. I hope it is as fulfilling as it promises to be. I'm attaching the invite, the schedule, and the Mid-Day article (from Thursday) about the same (which had me fearured in a photo taken at a relatively unfortunate moment)!

Gay friendliness on the rise

This Sunday was a great day for gay rights activism in India. NDTV 24X7 aired three back to back gay-friendly programs in prime time. I did not catch any of these programs. In fact, I got to know about this on the GB mailing list where there were a lot of e-mails about this event. It's really heartening to see this. And it's relieving to note that it's not sporadic. Even Priyanka Chopra, one of the very few women in Bollywood that I like, claimed that she's more comfortable with dancing with gay people than straight ones!

More seriously though, the media attention that the movement is more tangible than ever. Here are instances that I found yesterday.

• Today TOI had an editorial article One for Ramadoss which strongly supported Health Minister Ramadoss's statements to decriminalize homosexuality.
  
• Today's Mid-Day also had an article 'One night at a gay gala' about how gay friendly the party scene is becoming citing the Salvation Star parties as events which the straight community were dying to participate in.
  
• Mid-Day's internet portal had a poll about legalizing gay marriage. I was totally surprised to see that the voting results (at the time that I voted) were in favor for it!
  
• Mutiny.in, a popular community blog went to print for the first time earlier this month. In the first edition itself, there were a couple of very good gay friendly articles written by my internet-acquaintance Sanjukta. Here is the link to the entire magazine. The two articles are titled 'Stand Up For Yourself' and 'Coming Out'.

Maybe we will win our rights this time around. Check them out and spread the message around. If anyone lives in Chennai, take a print out of these and send them over to my sisters. (I was kidding, of course!)