Discreet meetings 
Founded in 1995, the organisation Lesbians and Bisexuals in Action (LABIA) was known as Stree Sangam, and their meetings were quietly orchestrated. A person sitting with a red rose at a café was the secret sign: If you knew, you knew. After initial introductions, the group would often head to Aksa Beach, where they could talk more freely and just be.

In 1998, GayBombay, one of the city’s earliest and informal LGBTQiA+ collectives, began crafting safe social spaces. They met at Just Around the Corner in Bandra (now Eat Around the Corner), easing into conversations over coffee before transitioning to someone’s home for deeper cultural dialogue. These gatherings were intimate (five to 10 people) and doubled as lifelines in a time when the queer community couldn’t exist out loud

Legendary library
In 1996, University of Mumbai became an unlikely backdrop to one of Indian cinema’s most subversive queer moments (at least in public imagination).

Filmmaker Riyad Vinci Wadia gave Indian cinema BOMgAY, an anthology co-directed with Jangu Sethna. Based on poems by R Raj Rao, the film is widely credited as India’s first gay film. It starred Rahul Bose and the late Kushal Punjabi, and stitched together six poetic vignettes of queer life in Bombay.

The film showcases its iconic sex scene taking place in the university’s library, but it wasn’t actually shot here. However, the association stuck, cementing Fort Library in queer cultural lore

Theatrewallah’s Legacy
Before NGMA became the city’s go-to for contemporary art, it played host to one of Bombay’s boldest and quietest queer voices. Sultan ‘Bobby’ Padamsee, a visionary theatre-maker, staged Salome here in 1943, after struggling to find a venue brave enough to host its daring content

Causeway of love
Long before apps and Pride parades, Colaba Causeway, in the ’80s and ’90s, doubled as the city’s first informal queer district, where gay couples strolled, flirted, and connected.

You would find them stealing quiet moments at Apollo Bunder (once called Wellington Pier), cozy up in the dark while catching a movie at Regal Cinema, or lounging at the nearby Cooperage Bandstand Garden, swapping life stories under the canopy of trees. Gokul, the beloved bar opposite the Taj, had its microcosm upstairs. Boozy dates and sly glances included.

But the epicentre of it all was Voodoo Pub, just a few doors from Radio Club. Mumbai’s first unofficial gay bar, it shut in 2012 following police raids

The Bombay Talkies
Before Bollywood glittered in Andheri, Bombay’s global film dreams flickered to life in a quiet Colaba lane. National House was once the nerve centre of Merchant Ivory Productions, a pioneering film company founded by producer-director duo Ismail Merchant and James Ivory in 1961. Partners in business and life (till Merchant’s death in 2005), Merchant and Ivory made 44 films together, and 23 of them were scripted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala