The episode starts off with Postcards host, Nikunj Agarwal and speaker, Anish Gawande, sitting on a sofa and discussing stories on queer identity and struggles.

Nikunj: Hi. I'm Nikunj and welcome to postcards, your unseen, passport to all things people, policy and politics. At postcards we aim to talk about some of the conversations that we don't usually have and by bringing diverse set of speakers we we hope to give you certain nuances about the different topics that we'll be discussing on the day.

Nikunj: Hi. Welcome to Postcards. Today, I'm very excited to talk about the episode Coales in 2024 with my incredible guest, Anish Gawande. Anish is the founder of Pink List India. His achievements know no length and breadth. He is also a Rhodes Scholar, but he's also my dear friend and we were classmates at Oxford.

Anish: Yes.

Nikunj: Funnily, this time last year, I was doing Instagram lives by the same name of postcards with Bianca on the genesis, me on energy and Victor on the refugee crisis around Ukraine. So it's been a very interesting journey. Now having you on this episode, two years later at the start of this podcast and having you as a first guest. Super super excited and thank you so much for doing this.

Anish: No. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be the first guest and to be chatting about things as we have a massive political churn happening in Delhi. So, what better way to talk about cohenism 2024 than after election?

Exactly. Just one day after the ceremony. You know? It's a good, good time to talk. Right. Did you did you go for the ceremony?

Anish: Please if you're watching, I would love to be there next time. I have no principles, values, or morals. I'll come for the free food at Rashtrapati Bhavan. Seem like we all had a nice time. Yeah.

I was seeing like a bunch of Instagram, you know, 4,000 food and all, but apparently someone was like you couldn't really see the ceremony very well. So I was like, “but who's going there to see the ceremony”? Like, you're going there to chill. To chill, to network, and everything else. Network you can't do it.

Those are low. You're an expert in networking. I think that is one of the good things that you have, Anish. But then you have to network in the smaller room. If those are low, may I waste your time?

Anish: Somebody who's been invited. That's true. Because MP plus. That's true. That's true.

There is enough other spaces for networking. India International Centre was created only for that. Yeah. That's true. That has very long history as well.

Right?

Yeah. So if someone is watching please invite Anish to the next one which is like 5 years from now.

Anish: Maybe earlier. We never know. We never know. Yeah. Let let this government also understand the struggles of running a coalition.

Having the threat of somebody pull out all the time. So you know it's good. Yeah. I think it's gonna be interesting to see how things evolve actually. I think it'll be good to watch Indian politics return to some semblance of normal.

Yeah. Yeah. I think somebody put it brilliantly. I think Yogendra Yadav only who I think has done a fairly good job this election. But, he put it nicely when he said Indian politics is back to what it was like.

Anish: No reason to celebrate massively. I don't think it's a huge change. I don't think the world is going to look very different. Yeah. But it's back to how it was ten years ago.

Yeah and everyone can have their own opinions about like good. Yeah. It's that also I wouldn't say.

I think it's not bad. We see the democratic backsliding has been stopped. So you're not going to see a level of decision making that happens unilaterally.