Mumbai: White coats to march for rainbow hearts

The pride parade is an annuallyheld event for the cityrsquos LGBT community File picMumbairsquos annual gay pride parade a mobile statement by the cityrsquos Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender LGBT community will be held on Saturday January 28 In a significant first for the march the parade will see a new demographic amongst its rainbowhued participants This time students from medical colleges across the city will be part of the parade They will be marching under the banner lsquoFuture Doctors for Equalityrsquo to prove that the doctors of tomorrow are sensitized and one with the gay cause These students will be wearing ldquowhite coats over regular attire so as to identify themselves as medical studentsrdquo says Topiwala National Medical College second year medical student Preet Sharma one of the movers and shakers behind the groupMedical student Preet Sharma is a member of the group bringing medical students together for the marchSmash stereotypesSays Preet ldquoWe are going to be a group of medical students and these will include mental health students too The idea germinated during discussions for the upcoming college festival for medical students called Aarambh 2017 in March We decided to focus on LGBT rights and celebrating ability which means showcasing the talent in the disabled The LGBT rights focus can start with marching in the gay paraderdquoPreet adds ldquoWe expect at least 100 to 200 medical students on the dayrdquo Preet says they have a multipronged aim through participation The obvious is to stand for ldquoequality We also want to push for employment for transgenders create awareness about HIV amongst the community and finally smash some misconceptions about the gay community within the medical professionrdquoUneasy equationPreetrsquos last admission points to the exchanges between the community and medical professionals In May last year the gay community marked the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia IDAHOT on May 17 with protests against doctors who make fat sums professing cures to homosexuality through bogus therapiesPallav Patankar from Humsafar a Mumbai nonprofit working for LGBT had said on the occasion ldquoThere are many doctors who claim that they can lsquocurersquo LGBT people There is a lot of exploitation and mental harassment that happens in the processrdquoThey even had a mascot of a person dressed as a duck at the Azad Maidan Press Club with the lsquoquack quackrsquo signifying that docs who promise to lsquoconvertrsquo gay persons through electric shocks part of aversion therapy are quacks It was a breakthrough moment in the Mumbai LGBT movement because it underlined the uneasy equation between some doctors and the communityMarring the mythsMisconceptions may be ldquoalso related to age not just to the medical professionrdquo says Dr Dhruv Ambegaokar 25 former Lokmanya Tilak Municipal Medical College student who has finished his MBBS degree Ambegaokar came out of the closet while in medical college When doctors march ldquoit does give the cause more legitimacyrdquo says Ambegaokar The public expects doctors to be more enlightened better read when it comes to these issues ldquoYetrdquo says Ambegaokar ldquoMyths prevail in the medical community too amongst the older doctors especially When I came out to my parents both of them doctors did not know too much about homosexuality themselves They read up and became aware about LGBT Now they are so coolrdquoConversion aversionCool are the Dr Ambegaokars but things get heated when the community and doctors have had confrontations Gay rights activist Ashok Row Kavi says ldquoDoctors are the worst informed about homosexuality At a talk I was giving a couple of years ago stupid questions like lsquoAre there injections to turn homosexuals into heterosexualsrsquo were thrown at me by doctors I answered sarcastically ldquoI know of injections that turn heterosexuals into homosexualsrdquoEqual rights activist Harish Iyer adds ldquoSometimes read most times the ones we seek advice from are the ones who are most prejudicedrdquo Then he says ldquoThat is a thing of the past now come to the Mumbai Pride 2017 and meet a fantastic group of medical students future doctors who would be marching the pride against prejudice and for equalityrdquo With the LGBT upbeat about a new dimension to their milestone march and an air of anxious excitement within medical students the process of closing the gap between the two often acrimonious sides may have just begunThe paradeThe Gay Pride Parade will be held on January 28 2017 It begins from August Kranti Maidan at 3 pm winding its way to Girgaum Chowpatty and back to the maidan where it is slated to end by 6 pm