Hyderabad: What would have been a rainbow of colours splashed across the city with fab parades, queer film festivals and meetups this year has been dampened by the pandemic.
The Pride Month this time might be a quieter affair with fewer physical events, but, the LGBTQIA+ community is ensuring the spirit of the month permeates at least in the online sphere. Starting with a virtual beauty pageant, the Mobbera Foundation has been observing a lot of traffic on their Instagram handle which has hosted community events like makeup masterclasses, debunking myths around gender pronouns, classical singing and dance performances, spreading information about the community and shining a light on the work being done in the community pan-India.
“We also brought out the history of famous figures within the queer community. There is a perception that this community is a western concept which is not the case. We post short stories about Queer icons on the handle. There is a separate team working just on putting out content every day. Also, we are posting 30-second stories daily where we explain gender identity terms, how to be an ally, how to use gender pronouns, etc,” says Anil, co-founder, Mobbera Foundation. The whole planning took a month with separate teams of volunteers handling posts, posters and Instagram content.
Their makeup masterclass Insta Live got the biggest number of hits, but it’s also career related posts where they talked about utilising LinkedIn profiles, crafting an impressive resume, prioritising mental health that grabbed a lot of eyeballs. The foundation is also working in tandem with other organisations across the country and gets a representative from there to talk about their work every weekend under Chai pe Charcha.
But, it’s not just serious stuff, they also brought in Bharatanatyam performer Avijit Kundu from Bengaluru for an online dance performance and singer Shaik Sameer along with Priyanka Ganguly for an evening of soulful semi-classical and Bollywood music.