Being queer in 80s & 90s Delhi ( Thread) :
This iconic 1982 picture by Sunil Gupta is one of my favorites pictures of 80s Delhi . It forms part of his work " Exile" in which he photographed gay life around various monuments of Delhi .
One of the earliest meeting point of queer

community was India coffee house situated in Mohan Singh Palace , Baba Kharak Singh Marg, CP . It was a concept called Red rose table. A table with red rose on it was meeting point where LGBT community came together to discuss “pressure to heterosexually marry; familial and

"societal lesbophobia; economic independence" . Very interestingly, as “Red” represented the colour of Communists, onlookers usually considered that probably they were discussing something political & paid no attention and as such it continued to be center

throughout 70s, 80s & 90s.
In the 90s , Regal cinema became the birthplace of LGBTQ movement fueled by film maker Deepa Mehta and 30 activists had held a historic candlelight vigil in defence of her film Fire outside the Regal Cinema building.
Interestingly it was a form of

Farsi that was lingo of LGBT from 70s to early 90s- carried forward from Hijras from the days of Sultant as secret lingo to keep themselves protected. Although, the syntactical structure is that of the common Hindi language speaker, not of that which relates to Persian.

Nouns like panthi, koti, niharan, dhurani, jogta, danga were used. The first two were used for gays, the third and foruth were for bisexuals and the last two were for lesbian people.
So important was role of this lingo/ language in LGBT community that the early NGOs who

started working for LGBT had to learn this language to interact .
Cruising areas developed gradually in several parts of the city from parks of North to South Delhi, from the East to the West Delhi.

Soon with change of time, public loos were also used as cruising places for more widespread choices. I remember Nehru Park being of the major cruising area in the 90s. Also pegs and pints pub in chanakyapuri . I cant remeber the name but there was a public loo outside one of the

cinemas of old delhi that was also a major cruising area

Note: All Photographs by Sunil Gupta was part of his ground breaking commissioned work Exile in the 80s