What does Pride mean in 2025? At a time when we are seeing safe spaces and rights for LGBTQIA+ folks around the world shrink, we wanted to make more of an effort than ever at articulating queer joy, resistance, and the reaffirmation of queer dignity. It was our inspiration for how we celebrated Pride @ Godrej 2025 at Godrej One in Vikhroli on 6th June, 2025, with the launch of Queer Directions — a new publishing imprint focused on queer voices — with Westland Books and QKnit Foundation.
The day began with a Pitch Bazaar, at which sixteen young queer folx pitched their stories to a star-studded jury for their feedback and mentorship. The jury members included our collaborators Karthika V.K, and Ajitha G.S of Westland; Amit Doshi, Head, IVM Podcasts; Saugata Mukherjee, Head of Content at Sony LIV; Chaitanya Hegde, Co-founder of the media company Tulsea; Dhrubo Jyoti, Senior Editor at Hindustan Times; Dhamini Ratnam, National Culture Editor at Hindustan Times; Gazal Dhaliwal, screenwriter and transgender rights activist; and our very own Parmesh Shahani, head, Godrej DEI Lab.
Each applicant presented their ideas and received feedback from the jury members. The stories delved into queer lives and reflected the rich diversity and complexity of queer experiences. These young, unpublished writers used innovative formats and styles and pitched ideas across genres and forms — from comic anthologies and illustrated children’s books to graphic novels, zines, films, and epistolary novels — all rooted in queer narratives and set in locations across India. The works explored queerness in small towns, kitchens, classrooms, and forgotten printing presses, and centred voices from the margins including those of queer Muslims, Adivasi transmen, and neurodivergent youth. After the Bazaar, participants and jury got an opportunity to continue their conversations over a delicious lunch, an old-fashioned Indian meal of the sort that usually portends a warm, happy siesta mood.
But nothing could have been further from our thoughts than a snooze! Because what was up next was what many Godrejites had been waiting for — the 2025 Pride March, the continuation of a tradition we began last year to celebrate the love and allyship we seek to give and receive in everything we do at Godrej.
The March began on the ninth floor of Godrej One with a Bollywood dance by the lovely performers from House of Sway, and a crescendo of dhols – which few could resist dancing to! Nadir Godrej, Managing Director of Godrej Industries and Chairman of Godrej Agrovet, along with Manish Shah, our Pride Marshall and MD and CEO, Godrej Capital declared the March open. They led the way to the beats of dhols, at the head of a dancing, swelling crowd. Our procession wound down the stairs, laughing and grooving; attracting curious eyes and more crowds, stopping again for more dance performances that affirmed the spirit of public, popular queer joy.
Drag artists Gentleman Gaga, Mx Siaan, and Komolika were the March’s showstoppers. They led the gathering into the atrium where lavani dancer Teshree dazzled the audience and got it on its feet with her spectacular performance. Even our rainbow flags and placards couldn’t help but sway along!
After the performance, Manish Shah, our Pride Marshall and MD and CEO of Godrej Capital, addressed us and hundreds of our colleagues. He spoke about his journey of becoming an ally to the LGBTQIA+ community personally and professionally, and how it had not just made him a better employer, but also a better father.
“I’ve come to appreciate the kind of the challenges, the struggles, the opportunities that [the LGTBQIA+ community] has been denied and I am so grateful that while the world is moving backwards, we are moving forwards,” he said. He was joined by Nisaba Godrej, Executive Chairperson of Godrej Consumer Products Ltd., who cheered on the crowd and invited everyone to re-commit to our values of love and respect for everyone.
Then everyone took a short break (helped along with tea and cupcakes) and geared up to welcome the newest, queerest publishing imprint in town — Queer Directions.
Glimpses from the pride march.
Parmesh Shahani, Head of the Godrej DEI Lab, began this part of the evening by explaining how the 2025 Pride @ Godrej events built on last year’s theme of ‘Telling Our Own Stories.’ He updated the audience on the work on the initiatives by the Godrej DEI Lab on LGBTQIA+ inclusion — including the launch of the Pride Fund, in February 2025 in collaboration with Dasra, Radhika Piramal and Keshav Suri Foundation to support NGOs working on queer advocacy at the grassroots. He also presented the DEI scorecard for LGBTQIA+ representation across the Godrej Industries Group of companies, and highlighted that we’ve grown to include 245 out queer employees across businesses as of March 2025.
“All our work, the reports, the Pride Fund, the different things we do through Godrej Foundation, the many exciting things we will do in future for the queer community, are all our commitment—towards a more inclusive India and a more queer-friendly India,” he concluded to thunderous applause.
Nisa Godrej stepped up, this time to welcome our external audience, and elaborated on the idea of love being vital to queer inclusion. She recounted her conversations with Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for All, and talked about how Kopp led her to uncover the importance of love and how fundamental it is to the work we do. She reiterated, “We’ve been through crises before. And what will surprise you is that in crisis, good people will come together and lead to do good things.”
Karthika V.K., publisher at Westland about Queer Directions, then spoke about the need for a queer storytelling-focused publishing imprint. She said, “It is not because we want to box it [the genre of queer publishing] in. It is not because we want to separate it from everything else. It is because we felt that if we focus on this, then we would be able to plan for it better. If you have a focus, you plan, you budget, you make sure that something happens.” And then it was launch time! The Westland team, Parmesh, and some of the wonderful writers who will be published by the Queer Directions imprint including Dhrubo Jyoti, Senior Editor at Hindustan Times, and Dhamini Ratnam, National Culture Editor at Hindustan Times, came together to do the honours. Dhrubo and Dhamini are the editors of “Queer India, Now” — an anthology of essays, memoirs, poems, and art. They were joined by other writers Raghavi S, one of India’s first openly transgender lawyers; Johann Arora, celebrity makeup artist, yoga therapist; and Priya Dali, the Creative Director of the Gaysi Family.
Launch of Queer Directions
In a quick conversation about their work, Dhrubo started off by talking about their motivation behind the “Queer India, Now” anthology, sharing that while many books have explored queer experiences, their anthology seeks to “give a snapshot of what queerness looks like today;” emphasizing that queerness is complex, messy, and shaped by intersecting identities, such as caste. They concluded by reading Begumpura, a poem by Shripad Sinnakar, written in “anti-caste language,” as described by the poet. The poem, featured in the anthology, raises powerful questions about migration, mobility, and reservation for Dalits.
Dhamini spoke about the limitations journalists often face when writing about queerness within traditional media formats and how editing the anthology under the Queer Directions imprint offered her the rare creative freedom to tell these stories differently. Her choice of reading was an excerpt from an essay about being a queer parent by Susan Dias — one of the petitioners in the 2023 marriage equality case in the Supreme Court.
The lawyer Raghavi S has co-authored the essay titled ‘Right to love, family and parenthood’ with Dr Aqsa Shaikh in the book ‘TransForming Rights: How Law Shapes Transgender Lives, Identity and Community in India edited by Jayna Kothari.’
Speaking on why accessibility of such books matter, she said that in many legal in local courts in India, stakeholders might not be sensitised to the lives and realities that queer people face. “We wanted [the essay] to be in a language that’s really simple to understand. So, you can just carry the anthology to a District Court judge and show it to them and say, I have a right to be with my partner. In a lot of habeas corpus cases that go to the High Court, the families hunt down partners. But the judge is still trying to wrap their head as to what to do.”
Johann Arora, who is writing a work of non-fiction for Queer Directions, spoke about his experiences of finding solace and inner peace after encountering breathing exercise therapy and how that experience set him on his current path. Talking about this, he said, "Outer activism is important, but inner transformation is equally important. And that’s where this book wants to bridge the gap. Because I feel that if healing is not done, even if we get our rights, freedom and acceptance; we won’t be able to enjoy it.”
It’s a perspective on acceptance at the workplace that Priya Dali, the Creative Director of the Gaysi Family, talked about next. She is one of the people behind the social media project, Queering Workspace, an initiative by Godrej Properties and Gaysi, which documents stories of queer folx and their experiences in the workplace. The aim of this anthology-in-the-works is to be a tool for businesses to create an environment of inclusion for the LGBTQIA+ community.
The first book under the Queer Directions imprint, “Desi Queers,” was then launched, with a small video shout-outfrom the anthology’s editors, Churnjeet Mann, DJ Ritu and Rohit K. Dasgupta, who are based in the United Kingdom. Their book, which examines the history of South Asian queer activism in the UK, underscores the Queer Directions mandate to help build bridges, not borders.
Then it was time to sit back and be transported back into the past, via theatre. The lights went down for Jhumkewali, a sapphic play written by Ami Bhansali and directed by Nidhi Krishna and Mekhala, and set in 1970s India.
The play, a coming-of-age story, explores queer identity, sapphic desire, and the changing nature of women’s role in society. It stars Sasha Dhawan and Harshini Misra. They play two women, Bindu and Rekha, who meet in a girls’ college in the Mumbai of protests and discos and are taken aback by what unfolds between them. The audience in the Godrej One auditorium laughed at the awkward meet-cutes, cried at the emotions, and once the curtains fell, there were smiles all around.
Rousing applause is hungry work. As we bid goodbye to the stage, some of our audience made their way to the Queer Bazaar organised by Godrej Properties Ltd., where many queer-owned businesses set up pop-stalls in Godrej One. Others headed to the cafeteria to enjoy delicious rainbow cupcakes by Trans Cafe – yes, we ordered seconds – and browse books by their favourite queer authors at the Crossword Bookstores stall.
Through the day, we found ourselves refreshed in our optimism, hope, determination – reassurance that even in difficult times for the LGBTQIA+ community, there are spaces of queer joy, queer affirmation, and committed allyship. It was a bright moment, and the sun shone through the storm clouds of the unseasonal monsoon for all of us.
Text by Pulakita Mayekar.