Glued to a TV set inside a small house in picturesque Kurseong, Darjeeling district, 33-year-old Gaurav Pramanik cried quietly, but bitterly. In various parts of the country, celebrations had broken out. It was September 6 and the SC had just decriminalised homosexuality.
Gaurav wept for two reasons. He was happy he wouldn¡¯t have to be defensive about his sexuality anymore. And he was sad and angry he had been so for many years. Memories of what he went through at IT giant Tech Mahindra came flooding back and the tears just rolled down.
Suddenly he found himself shaking at the hurt and humiliation faced by him for nearly three years at the hands of his former boss in Tech Mahindra. A long time after that, he got up, switched on his computer and wrote a mail to the company¡¯s chief diversity and inclusivity officer Richa Gautam. ¡°She was also my chief tormentor¡±, he said. For much of his life after he came out when he was 21, Gaurav¡¯s parents mostly ignored issues arising out of his homosexuality. But all that changed when they heard what had happened to their child far away from home in Noida, UP. They shuddered at how he had quietly suffered, unable to reach out to his own father and mother for help, afraid that they would again pretend that they was no elephant in the room. ¡°Now, though, it is as if I have got them back in some ways,¡± he said.
The harassment and bullying began some three months after he joined Tech Mahindra on April 15, 2013. Inside its closed board rooms, Gautam would call sexual and religious minorities by despicable names. ¡°She ridiculed me for being gay, called me effeminate and said that it affected my work. She would openly voice her homophobia in front of people, asking us to go to Pakistan. She would lower our performance ratings,¡± he said.
The persecution continued for nearly three years. ¡°But we remained quiet, seething in silence. ¡±
Gaurav, who was group lead (training) at Tech Mahindra, finally left the company on September 2016. On September 9, Gaurav tweeted screenshots of his mail to Gautam in which he called her out for her ¡°bigotry¡±. It eventually forced Tech Mahindra to sack the senior employee on discrimination charges.
¡°Sometimes, even the darkest clouds have a silver lining,¡± Gaurav said. ¡°Back home, my parents, who never discussed my homosexuality in the past 10 years, were in deep shock. After they heard about my Tech Mahindra experience, they became my biggest supporters.¡±