When we thought of how we could take forward the legacy of the ‘first love‘ video last year, we thought of involving our allies. After all, the campus is an ecosystem – and the earliest fear that LGBTQ students may have is whether they will be accepted by people around. Our allies in the video must have gotten rid of their doubts.

Our introduction video this year is called ‘Mere Saathi’ (My Companions) and is directed by Anisha Bajaj, a third year student of Energy Science and Engineering, and IIT-B’s first out lesbian student.  Says Anisha, a photography and video-making enthusiast, “Orientation should not matter in friendship. We have been lucky to have such awesome friends and we hope new entrants see the warmth too. My focus was to ensure this message comes out as clearly as possible”.

The video has three LGBTQ students, with their friends. It was first screened to a packed hall of first year undergraduates on 28th July 2015. The session continued with informal conversation with the students.

The video was picked by Buzzfeed and Storypick, and continues to spread warm vibes about friendship and acceptance.

This year Techfest has taken up the issue of Homophobia and Transphobia, and come up with an idea of spreading awareness on this on the occasion of International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia through an interactive video as we believe that this topic has been untouched in the last few years. People in the LGBTQ community are still facing the problems in their real life which are unknown to the Indian society.

International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia is celebrated on the 17th of May every year. Homo/transphobia refers to hateful treatment and social injustice towards the homosexual and transsexual members who are very much a member of our community as any of us of our community.

This video, created by Saathi, IIT Bombay’s LGBTQ resource group, in association with Techfest, challenges homophobia to build safe spaces for queer people – with just a hug!

The video is a unique social experiment, where strangers of different sexual orientations talk to each other, and hug each other. With a seemingly simple concept, the video captures a spectrum of moments: awkwardness to warmth. A beautiful peculiarity being the instance when a homosexual person comes out his friend on camera – and he still gets a hug.

Saathi is a LGBTQ resource group consisting of LGBTQ individuals and allies associated with IIT Bombay. Set up in 2010, Saathi aims to create a safe space for community members and a more inclusive IIT Bombay campus. Saathi has organized several social events in the past, including movie screenings in coordination with Kashish Mumbai International Queer Film Festival.

At the undergraduate orientation on 25th July 2014, Saathi was introduced to the new entrants of the IIT-B campus. The details of the orientation are as follows:

0) Aditya Joshi and Aditya Shankar worked on a pamphlet that introduced LGBTQ and Saathi in four languages: English, Hindi, Marathi and Telugu. Avinash, Navdeep wrote the Telugu writeup while Prudhvi suggested edits. The languages were dependent on availability of writers in these languages. A print copy of the pamphlet was distributed at the orientation. The pamphlet can be found here.

1) We screened a new video. Check it out. It’s very cool . The idea of making it multilingual worked well with the audience applauding each time a new language came up. The quotes at the end were received very well. Sudipto suggested the concept of “first love” that was used in the video. You see Aniket, Peeyush Sharma, Aditya Shankar, Prudhvi, Ruturaj, Madalsa and Aaditya Joshi (me) in the video. Aditya Shankar did a brilliant job at filming and packaging the video.

2) The video was followed by Aditya Shankar introducing Saathi and conducting a quick quiz with the audience. I was amazed to see that ALL questions were answered correctly! (Some of them were definitely level 2 like “Which cryptography expert was gay?”).

3) We also had a rainbow-decorated stall outside the venue where we distributed freebies, displayed the books in Saathi library and collected registrations. 43 signed up to be on the mailing list! Way beyond our expectations!!

Meanwhile, when the video and the quick quiz ended, a part of the “cast” of the movie assembled on stage. The audience greeted us with a roaring applause – it’s the hardest I have heard anyone clapping, seriously!

Seeing the participation of all us volunteers and the response from the audience, I am positive that this awesome orientation is only the beginning of an awesome year for Saathi.

Note from the Editors: Saathi’s efforts and resource materials for orienting incoming undergraduate students on LGBTQ issues are, to our knowledge, the first of their kind in India. We hope the resources they have shared in this post will benefit wider audiences, and spur similar initiatives on other campuses. Check out Orinam’s list of LGBTQ campus groups in India, and our resources for educational institutions. Also, please let us know of other initiatives of this kind.

Says Aditya Shankar from  Saathi, the campus LGBT group, “…the video was made for sensitising IIT-Bombay freshmen on sexual orientation. The languages chosen reflect the undergraduate demographic composition. But the video was specifically made so that it doesn’t become very specific to IIT-B as was the video last year in which I came out of the closet.”

Kudos to SAATHI for this effort! Click below to watch the video: