This is my last piece for the US pride month and in general for this publication. I would like to leave you with some reasoning about a question that we all are asking, “Why Pride”. I am often told “straight people don’t have pride parades, why do gay people feel the need to parade their sexuality”. Firstly, it is not gay people but the whole spectrum of the rainbow that comes on to the streets for the pride. This even includes heterosexual people who join in as allies. Secondly, who  said heterosexual people do not have pride parades? Well, heterosexual pride parades are just not called pride parades, they are called engagement, marriage and anniversaries. Also these “parades” of heterosexuality happen frequently for every person not like queer pride parades that happen once a year for the city. We actually should not need a pride month or a pride day or for that matter, we shouldn’t have women’s day and children’s day either.

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Everyday should be pride day, everyday should be women’s day, everyday should be children’s day. And we are celebrating this day and month because we have still not reached the stage where we are equal. And the truth is that we will always need to have pride parades and pride months, because one thing that we have learnt from supreme court verdict that reinstated section 377 in its original form is that we cannot afford to be complacent. We cannot afford being complacent. Even if we get our rights, we are not certain that the rights would not be rolled back. Prides are not just a celebration. Prides are also a way to protest and to highlight the plight of queer persons locally and globally. It is not all hunky-dory here, and neither it is in the US and Canada where one could marry a person irrespective of the person’s gender.  

The rights could be rolled back anytime. We need to strive to keep our head over water and keep flipping our feet to move forward. That’s why pride. 

Mumbai organises pride at the dusk of winter in January. People from all walks of life join in making it one of the most attended pride parades in India. We all boast about the number of people who attend the pride and pride ourselves about outnumbering  the attendance in other pride parades. However, it is not about numbers alone that our city should be proud about. The variety of groups that join in is something we should all take pride in. We are more than just alphabets. We are similar yet different and different yet similar. We are individuals breathing the same air and fighting for an our share of love without prejudice. 

We are beyond a brand, a lifestyle and we are beyond fun. We are your brothers, sisters, cousins, sons, sometimes, even your father, mother, wife or husband. We are everywhere, yet our voice is muzzled. We longing for our equal share under the equal sun.

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