Written in February.

“Mental Illness to Mental Well-being”, a talk on the evolution of LGBT conversations, was organized by the Gender Champions team on the 24th of January, 2020. The talk featured Mahesh Natrajan, an openly gay alumnus of BITS Pilani, currently working as a counsellor at InnerSight.

The talk started by Mahesh reliving his experiences on campus as a closeted gay man. He recalled how his seniors, sensing he was not as ‘straight-passing’ as his peers, once invited him to join the ‘BITS Homosexual Society (BHS)’, during his first year. Visibly excited at the prospect of such a society on campus, he was eventually disappointed to learn no such club existed, and his seniors were making fun of him. More events like this eventually led to him ‘invisibilizing’ himself as he slowly withdrew from social interactions and stopped taking part in extracurricular activities.

However, he did find some solace in the ‘BITS Student Library’, a collection of fiction books stacked behind Vyas. He joked about how the Vyas corner where his room had been, has now been termed as the ‘gay corner’ by his batchmates since two more students who had rooms near his have also since come out as gay.

Mahesh shared the story of his first love on campus. He said he had fallen in love with a classmate who was in love with another boy. Seeing them together impacted his mental health, leading to a constant state of low anxiety and depression. He confessed that he had attempted suicide by electrocution and joked about how he had been saved by continual power cuts on campus back in 1990. A month later, he had attempted suicide again—this time by asphyxiation—but luckily, only blacked out for two days and a half, suffering no permanent damage. This led to him breaking down and confiding about his sexuality to a nurse in the medical centre who scolded him with the evergreen, ‘focus on your studies, you can do all this later.’ Deciding to leave romance for when he moved to a big city after graduating, he repressed his sexuality and focused on his academics instead, graduating with an 8.8 CGPA.

After graduating, he started working at Infosys. He was still ‘invisibilizing’ himself but soon developed the courage to approach a counsellor due to his abusive partner. He started the session by coming out to the counsellor and recalled how she took a deep breath and just said, ‘I don’t know what kind of life you people lead,’ teaching him that professionals who deal with mental health might not be trained to deal sensitively with homosexuality. 

Opening up a dialogue with the audience, he asked them why they thought homosexuality had originally been termed as a mental illness. The answers ranged from religious reasons to psychological theories and political identity. Next, he discussed the timeline of homosexuality from being considered a mental illness to dysphoria, and finally, to being accepted as a valid sexual orientation. He proceeded to educate the audience about the differences between romantic attraction, sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression with the help of the Genderbread diagram.

Talking about the spectrum of sexuality, he gave an example of how gay people are sometimes extremely transphobic and vice versa. He mentioned how the LGBT tag is more useful from an administrative point of view than to acquire a deep understanding of the community and how the various sub-communities within the LGBT group are not always friendly towards each other. He emphasized the importance of turning the campus into a safe space like the ‘Queer Campuses’ in the metro cities.

At this point, he took a break from his talk and began answering some anonymous questions from the audience which had been collected by passing chits during the talk. A recurring question was, ‘How did you come out to your parents?’ He advised the students to make sure they do not rush coming out to their parents since they are still dependent on them. However, if they do want to do it, they should first educate them on the topic through various media like TV shows such as Satyamev Jayate and Sex Education. He recalled how he had first come out to his sister, who had then helped him come out to their parents.

He wrapped up the talk by stressing on the importance of being an active ally and turning the campus into a safe space. He asked the students to wear pride merchandise, spread awareness about sexuality and gender, and not shy away from conversations about these issues.

The talk ended with a vote of thanks by Dr Jyoti and Dr Saumi Ray.