Delhi and Bangalore saw their first gay pride marches over the weekend, along with Calcutta. But at least one masked lucha libre bhenji didn’t want to risk it:

Yesterday was the biggest day in the life of one 26-year-old insurance agent in Delhi, yet he came to the city’s long-awaited first gay parade hiding behind a mask. “I have to remain invisible,” he said. “If my parents see me on TV, I won’t be able to go home. And if my colleagues recognise me, there’ll be hell to pay in the office.” [Link]

Sunday’s event commemorated the Stonewall Riots… A graffiti on a placard in the hands of petite young woman at the parade served as a reminder: ‘Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Isai, hetero-homo bhai, bhai’. [Link]

With the street reverberating with the beats of the dhol, someone broke into a song: ”Hum hain raahi pyar ke…” and the crowd followed it. Then came another oldie, in a new form: ”Hum gay hain to kya hua, dilwaale hain…” Then the nation’s love anthem: ”Pyaar kiya to darna kya…”… [Link]

Men wore sparkling saris, women wore rainbow boas and hundreds of people chanted for gay rights in three Indian cities Sunday… “This is a national coming-out party,” said Alok Gupta, a lawyer from Mumbai, as he stood among several hundred activists in New Delhi. “This is a simple thing: We are seeking the right to love…” Many of the marchers wore rainbow-colored masks so their friends and families wouldn’t know they were gay. Many others declined to speak to journalists.

While small groups have marched in the eastern city of Calcutta in recent years, Sunday’s events were the first gay pride parades in Bangalore and New Delhi. Several hundred people turned out at each of the three events… [Link]

The laws and culture are still deeply conservative:

“New Delhi is a very, very homophobic place,” said Paroma Mukherjee, a lesbian and senior photojournalist with the Indian Express. Indian newspapers are rife with tales of suicides of homosexual men and women pressured into traditional, arranged marriages. [Link]

Perversely, the marches felt free partly because they’re under the radar:

… few marchers wore masks — which the organizers had provided for those who haven’t come out — and there were no protests from religious or socially conservative groups. “This is amazing,” said Ranjit Monga, a public relations executive, “No one would’ve believed 10 years ago a gay parade was possible in Delhi.”

… Passengers in a bus that stopped near the marchers said they had no clue what the rainbow flags stood for or what the marchers were doing. Even the three men beating the bhangra drums for the marchers — Monu, Mahesh and Inder Bhat — said they had no clue what the march was about. [Link]

Photos courtesy of Yahoo News and ToI.