It’s no secret that we, Team TAGMO, take pride in celebrating PRIDE all year round. This year we put out a delightful Indian mithai box full of mouth-watering sweets like Kaju Katli and Thandai burfi – but the most delicious part was that we got to partner with Desi Rainbow Parents and Allies and donate 10% of the proceeds to them! Desi Rainbow and TAGMO have been long-time collaborators in the queer South Asian community and we want you, the TAGMO community, to know more about the amazing work that they do. Priyanka Rajagopalan, creative writer and researcher with Team TAGMO, sat down with Aruna Rao, Executive Director of Desi Rainbow, and got her insight on what it’s like to operate a non-profit and why TAGMO is an important connection.
PR: Hi Aruna, thanks so much for giving us this opportunity to talk about your work with Desi Rainbow and your thoughts on the collaboration with TAGMO! So let’s get right into it: could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
AR: Hi Priyanka, thanks for having me – it’s great to be here! My name is Aruna Rao, she/her, and I’m the founder and executive director of Desi Rainbow Parents and Allies. I am the mother of a queer trans child and an Indian American immigrant who’s lived in New Jersey for over 30 years. I started Desi Rainbow Parents and Allies in 2017 to create resources for families of queer South Asian individuals so they can better learn to support their loved ones.
PR: That’s a commendable effort and a great help to our community. What got you into this line of work?
AR: It was definitely my own lived experience as being the mother of a queer, trans child that got me started with Desi Rainbow. Something I think about a lot is how my kid came out to me, not just once but several times, again and again over the course of a few years. I think that’s a pattern for queer people, you never come out just once in your life – you do it over and over.
So I remember my child pretty early on trying to tell me, “Mom, I’m a boy.” And at that time, with little to no understanding of gender and sexuality and queerness, I just brushed that off to mean that they were a tomboy. And I clearly didn’t take it as seriously as I should have. So then I just kind of forgot about it until a few years later, when they were older, and they sat me down and came out again. And I remember experiencing all sorts of emotions in that moment – like I had no language and knowledge to support my child, so I was devastated. Instead of joy and happiness I had a lot of grief, a sense of loss, and a lot of sorrow. It was really difficult to process in my own family, as South Asian immigrants.
And at the time, it was really hard to look to other families of queer people in the US for support – because where were people who were like me, looked like me? It felt really isolating, but I knew I couldn’t be the only one. I came from a background in mental health, I had worked for 20 years in mental health advocacy – so I knew there had to be families like mine out there that needed help and support. They needed the knowledge and assistance on how to help their queer family members.
So that’s how Desi Rainbow Parents and Allies got its start – and of course it’s expanded way beyond me now. We have so many people in our network, so much support, and it’s so lovely to see the impact we have on the South Asian community.
PR: That’s a powerful story. Speaking of expansion, how did you get involved with Chef Surbhi and TAGMO? What was it like meeting her? She says hello by the way, and she loves you – says you’re such a powerhouse and I agree!
AR: Oh she’s lovely, and I love her too! I remember first getting to know her circa 2018, when Desi Rainbow was first getting its start and she started showing up on social media and news a lot. And what immediately was so great about her was that she came with her whole self – she always showed up authentically. And you know, just as I was doing this kind of organizing where I was looking for other queer, South Asian people in the community, finding her was such a blessing. She isn’t just a chef, she’s also an activist.
So I reached out to her, got to know her a little bit more. And I got to know about her own journey questioning her sexuality, coming out late in life, and feeling this kind of isolation being queer and brown in the US – being unable to feel this connection with the queer community because we couldn’t see enough people who looked like us. It felt natural for Surbhi to become involved with us then – it was clear that she really valued Desi Rainbow’s mission and TAGMO was perfectly aligned with our goals. She’s been really involved with so much that we do, from collaborating with us on mithai boxes to even being interviewed by us – she was on an episode of our series Proud Possibilities, where she was interviewed by our members and it was really amazing.
I think we at Desi Rainbow really want to see Surbhi and TAGMO succeed, because she gives our younger community a lot of hope – that there is a future for them. What she’s doing with TAGMO as a space is really helping combat exclusion and isolation that queer kids feel. I’m actually reminded of something that Laverne Cox once said: that she doesn’t like the term role model – she prefers “possibility model”. Because while role model implies that these kids have to aspire to be one thing, a possibility model shows that they have so much potential for their futures.
PR: Very inspiring – I never thought about it that way! Going back to your role at Desi Rainbow, how do you stay motivated to do this work? What are your biggest challenges?
AR: Well initially, for me, Desi Rainbow started out as a kind of therapy. But especially over the pandemic, I could really see the kind of impact we were making and how important it was to so many people – as someone who worked in mental health advocacy for twenty years, it really felt like my calling. Putting together these resources for the community was so rewarding and I really love being able to create these intergenerational, allied spaces. We partner with other organizations like Salga and Satrang, and we never make these exclusionary spaces. Because it’s so important to build bridges between queer people and their families, and this means bridging gaps between cishet people and queer people as well.
It’s honestly been a huge amount of work for the last 5 years – but we have a board now, we have so many volunteers, and most importantly a community that’s willing to put in the effort. There are a lot of responsibilities such as fundraising and I think this is something that TAGMO and Surbhi really understand. And at Desi Rainbow, we know the importance of always growing, always remaining flexible to combat any problems that arise. As South Asians we understand the importance of our traditions, but as queer people and queer allies we also recognize that it’s important for these traditions to be reimagined – it’s part of the diasporic, immigrant experience.
I’m reminded of a time when my child was transitioning and we were still navigating how to come out to the community. It was during Raksha Bandhan, and our neighbor’s daughter tied a rakhi for my child. And it was really great because it wasn’t a huge, grand gesture but it meant so much – it was how my neighbors were acknowledging my child’s queerness and trans identity through the subverting of this tradition. It was beautiful.
PR: That is such a beautiful story. Last question for you, is there anything you’d like the TAGMO community to look out for from Desi Rainbow? Anything you’re excited for in the future?
AR: I’m definitely looking forward to the Rakhi mithai box – I really love that Surbhi is partnering with us and donating. I think queering Rakhi is the perfect message to put out.
In other news, we’re also excited to be celebrating South Asian Heritage Month in the US! It was initially started in the UK and we want to bring it over – we’ve decided to have it from July 18th to August 17th, and we want to center queer diasporic experiences. I think the collaboration with TAGMO is perfect for that timeframe too, because at a time of such political chaos and difficulty for LGBTQIA+ kids and their families it imparts a great message – that no matter what, there are always proud possibilities.
If you’d like to support TAGMO and the amazing work that Desi Rainbow Parents and Allies do and get some delicious mithai out of it, consider buying TAGMO’s PRIDE mithai box and Rakhi collection! 10% of the proceeds go to supporting Desi Rainbow.
