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For gays and lesbians in India, cyberspace is where you leave behind the closets and straitjackets enforced by meatspace. The best, most supportive websites still come out of Mumbai, but the rest of the country is catching up. Dedicated gay and lesbian chatrooms, at indiaworld. com, yahoo’s India chat section and several other mainstream sites tend to be comfortable spaces, even if they do attract droves of hetero males looking for voyeuristic kicks. Conversations can range from the politics of heterosexual language to gay art, though I remember one discussion that stopped dead when one of the guys online confessed he was so troubled about being gay that he wanted to commit suicide. For the next two-and-a-half hours, total strangers in the chatroom banded together to offer him help, advice and solutions. It’s the dedicated websites, though, that really help to form a sense of community. www.bombay-dost. com offers most of the benefits of India’s oldest gay magazine, with add-ons thrown in. www. gaybombay.com is one of the most friendly Indian websites online, offering links, support groups and legal advice. www. members.tripod.com/gaydelhi/ is a well-organised site that offers tips on cruising and gay-friendly accommodation (sadly limited at the moment). www.my.123india. com/amalg/ attempts to bring together gays and lesbians who are under societal pressure to get married so that they can set up marriages of convenience-a sad but necessary solution to a very common problem. India’s first helpline for lesbian and bisexual women also has a website at www.main.org/ trikonetejas/aanchal.html-however, it’s limited to Mumbai. www.trikone.org is the mother of them all and is specially useful for Indian gays, bisexuals and lesbians based abroad.

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www.gayguide.net/asia/india is highly recommended for travellers who’re looking for helpful suggestions and tips. This is, of course, by no means a comprehensive list. How much of this helps? Several of the bisexual and lesbian women I chatted with were emphatic that they had developed a sense of community and belonging online that was unfortunately, not available in the real world. A newbie gay man in Baroda described at length the support that had been made available to him-he was introduced to fellow professionals who were gay, guided to websites that contained the information he was looking for, and given both legal and emotional support during his particularly messy divorce. "The best part of being lesbian online," types FreeBird_from_ Pune, "Is that I don’t have to apologise for who I am."

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