A rangoli is a pattern made on the ground, often at the entrances of Indian homes, temples, or courtyards, using colored rice, petals, or pigment. These beautiful designs are most often made during festivals to greet gods, neighbors, and good fortune.
Just like the queer South Asian collective that borrows its name, it is never just decoration. It is a warm welcome.
That is the spirit Rangoli Pittsburgh carries into everything it does. This grassroots collective, built by and for queer South Asians in the city, has grown from a quiet four-person meet-up into a vibrant and evolving community. They show up in parks, in cafes, in drag bars, and, most of all, in each other’s lives.
Every year on June 1, the volunteer-run group gathers for an LGBTQ+ AAPI Day of Visibility picnic, a third-space celebration of food, joy, and community. Now in its seventh year, the event has become both a beloved tradition and a powerful statement. Organized in collaboration with Jaded PGH, it takes place at the intersection of Pride Month and Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. It is a day to claim space as both queer and South Asian and to celebrate the fullness of that identity.
This year, the weather was colder than anyone had hoped, but no one seemed to mind. The picnickers brought their own rainbow of pride with them.
“Thankfully we had hot chai and plenty of joy to go around. That saved the day,” Surya Ramachandran, one of Rangoli’s earliest members, tells Pittsburgh City Paper.
Flagstaff Hill in Schenley Park bloomed with blankets, rugs, and tubs filled with homemade food. There was chaat, a tangy, spice-laced Indian snack; japchae, glossy Korean noodles with sesame and vegetables; crispy cauliflower Manchurian in a sticky chili sauce; creamy pasta salad; and soft, pillowy Chinese-style steamed buns.
Someone brought in fresh lychees that vanished in minutes. Another carried a carrom board. Others played mahjong in the grass. There were gold henna tattoos, rounds of badminton, and hot masala chai from Karavansarai Chai to cut through the chill. People wore ethnic clothes layered under puffer jackets. The playlist swayed from indie pop to old-school Bollywood.
“It’s always sweet,” co-founder Satvika Neti tells City Paper. “That’s the word that keeps coming back to me. Sweet. Just showing up on Flagstaff Hill, spreading out rugs, passing food around, it’s like a dream of community we actually get to live out.”
Rangoli hosted its first LGBTQ+ AAPI Day of Visibility in 2019, without much fanfare. “We got proclamations from the city of Pittsburgh and the state of Pa. demarcating the day,” Neti says. “But we didn’t get the buzz we were hoping for that first year.”
Today, that quiet beginning has grown into something with national reach. “We were recently invited to help organize the Bay Area’s Week of Visibility, inspired by us,” Neti says. “It was so moving to be part of queer Asian history in that way.”
Rangoli’s origin story begins in 2017, at a meeting of the Alliance for South Asians in Pittsburgh (ASAP). Neti, co-founder Deepshikha Sharma, and another participant realized, in a moment of recognition, that they were all queer. That realization became the seed of something more.
“When we realized how important that queer and South Asian intersectional identity was to us and how much we wanted to share that with others who looked like us,” Neti says, “we started meeting more regularly.” A fourth member joined, and the group became a queer offshoot of ASAP. When ASAP dissolved the following year, Rangoli Pittsburgh emerged as an independent group in 2018.
“We were in our early 20s at the time,” Neti says. “just trying to create something we hadn’t seen before. Something we needed.”
“We were too brown for queer spaces and too queer for brown spaces,” Sharma tells CP. “It was really important to us at the beginning that we let people know that this specific intersection of identities existed at all.”
Their earliest meetups were intimate. Friendsgivings with two guests. Potlucks where organizers outnumbered attendees. They also started Chill & Chats — casual hangouts designed to create a space for conversation and simply existing together. “At the beginning, we ourselves were the community we were hoping to meet the needs of,” Sharma says.
When the pandemic hit, they adapted. Virtual drag shows took the place of parties. Chill & Chats moved to Zoom. Instagram DMs became lifelines. But it was after lockdown, in 2022, that things truly opened up.
“It felt like all these folks had moved here during the pandemic and were looking for community,” Sharma says. “And they found it with us.”
By 2024, their Friendsgiving had grown to nearly 20 people. “Many of these folks talked about how thankful they were for the community Rangoli had offered them,” Neti says. “They’d met their best friends here.” They’ve gone on to host dance parties with 100+ attendees.
This sense of connection is now the bedrock of Rangoli’s model. Their monthly Chill & Chats, hosted at places like Bantha Tea Bar, Dobra Tea, or Margaux, consistently draw a crowd.
“My first Chill & Chat, meeting another Desi trans person for the first time, it affirmed that it was a possibility for me,” member Vasu Magesh tells CP. “And that I’m certainly not alone.”
That sense of possibility is what drives Rangoli’s approach to programming. Ramachandran puts it simply: “Our events often begin with the question: what do we wish existed? Or, it would be cool if that happened. And then we proceed to make that happen.”
They’ve curated iftar celebrations, virtual drag shows, and queer dance nights blending Bollywood and Tollywood, amongst other events.
“Art has always been part of Rangoli’s heart,” Ramachandran says. “It’s how we resist the idea that queerness is only a Western thing.”
But joy and celebration have always been braided with political clarity.
“We are anti-imperialist and anti-fascist,” Magesh says. “We speak publicly about advocating for a free Palestine and Kashmir. We are against Hindutva ideology, casteism, and Islamophobia. And we center our activism on combating transmisogyny.”
Taking a stance has not been without cost. “Some people expect solidarity with Hindutva-aligned movements,” Neti explains. “And when we don’t deliver that, they push back hard.” One event focused on Kashmir-facing protests. Others have been criticized for queering religious imagery or dismissed as importing a Western identity.
Still, Rangoli remains resolute. Their event invitations come with community guidelines that set the tone from the outset. “We’re not gatekeeping,” Ramachandran says. “But we don’t allow harm to go unchecked.”
The group is also deliberate about representation. “We work to include Sri Lankan, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Nepali voices,” Magesh says. “And we try to make our events intergenerational.”
Compensation, too, is a baseline. “From the beginning, we’ve worked to make sure artists and collaborators are paid,” Sharma says. “Whether it’s a drag queen, a poet, or a chai maker, we believe labor deserves respect.”
In 2023, for their five-year anniversary, Rangoli hosted a drag night that paired a veteran performer, KaMani Sutra, with a first-time performer who had just started attending events. The two shared the stage. The crowd roared. “We’re not just about the polished performances,” Neti says. “We want to make space for people to grow.”
Another memory that stays with Neti came from tabling at the Mustard Seed Film Festival in Philadelphia. “I saw my first South Asian-only drag show,” Neti says. “It was the first time I’d seen that many queer South Asians in one place in my life. Being able to recreate even a little of that magic back home has been everything.”
That magic often emerges in personal moments, too. At the Jalebi Baby dance party in Pittsburgh, a new member who had just moved from the Bay Area turned to Neti on the dance floor and said, “This instantly made Pittsburgh feel like home.”
Their most enduring creation might be their zine, Mirrors. It gathers poems, stories, and artwork by queer South Asians from Pittsburgh and beyond. Funded through community donations, Mirrors offers not just a platform, but a reflection of identities so often erased or oversimplified in mainstream narratives.
Collaboration is a constant in Rangoli’s work. They have partnered with Jaded PGH, City of Asylum, Formosa, drag artists, advocacy groups like APIPA and APALA, and the City’s LGBTQIA+ Commission. Their earliest allies came from that original 2017 meeting, now organized under ASAPP, the Alliance for South Asian Progressives in Pittsburgh.
Perhaps Rangoli’s biggest impact is also the hardest to measure; it is the breath of relief when someone walks into a Rangoli event and realizes they are not alone.
“There’s always someone who comes up to us and says, ‘I didn’t know this existed. I’ve lived in Pittsburgh for 10 years and I’ve never seen anything like this.’ And that’s what keeps us going,” Neti says.
Ramachandran recalled the gasps when Bollywood songs dropped during drag performances. “It reminds people of who they are. And who they can be.”
What sustains Rangoli is not only visibility; it is intimacy. “We’ve always joked that the worst thing we could’ve done for productivity was becoming friends,” Neti says. “We are trying first and foremost to build a base of community, and then working with that community to build advocacy. Our favorite parts of Rangoli are the in-betweens. Reminding each other to eat before an event. Jamming to Punjabi folk metal during six-hour meetings. Or just venting about the week without opening our laptops. We keep each other whole. And that joy and community is a huge part of why we’re able to do all the work we’ve done. Because we love each other.”
Looking ahead, Rangoli hopes the next generation of queer South Asians will feel less isolated, more empowered, and never again invisible.
“It can be hard. Or at least, it has been hard for us to find South Asians in leftist spaces,” Magesh says. “We want them to not only find each other there, but be able to grow from there as well. Our hope is that other queer South Asians can grow up knowing that despite what they’ve been told, they are not alone. That they have somewhere not just where they’re heard, but where they can continue to fight for the world that they want. We hope that one day, no one has to fight for that world anymore.”
This article appears in Jun 25 – Jul 1, 2025.
