My message to the LGBT community

I came across this video (https://youtu.be/RHZbeLdVxnY) today morning and it incensed and saddened me to know that someone who has enough confidence to address President Obama had to beg and be a prostitute in the past. I have been coming across different news articles about the discrimination meted out to the LGBT community for quite some time now. The problem with us is, unless we are able to draw parallels to situations, our advice and views fall on deaf ears and it can also get me admonished for doling out advice without proper comprehension of other’s plight. So here is my message to the community.

I was in a temple with my dad recently. There was a sizable crowd milling around and suddenly we saw a cat walking by with it’s tail up. The first thing that came our minds was, if that was any other animal, even a cockroach, it would have drawn some sort of response from the people. But no one bothers about cats. There are people who like cats and people who don’t but the general consensus is that of acceptance. How do they achieve this? They package themselves beautifully. They tempt us to cuddle them, they purr when we stroke them, they keep themselves clean and they do all sorts of weird things to attract our attention to them.  Now, all members of the feline family are notoriously elusive. How come only cats adapted to us? Because they know we have adapted to them and they would be safe among us. But cats can never be domesticated completely. I have lived with cats all my life and I know that if I touch them when they are busy or doing their own things I am going to get bitten or scratched for sure.

Let me draw that parallel here with the LGBT community. Transgenders throng buses, trains and traffic signals in India, they touch people and ask for money. I find it very uncomfortable because physical contact with anyone, be it with fellow humans or animals should always be based on mutual consent. Why would I give you money based on your sexual orientation? Why would I care about the sexual orientation of people who are travelling or working with me? I may not know the sexual orientation of my colleagues sitting around me and they may not be knowing mine, but how does it matter? By highlighting your sexuality, you are taking the worst possible way of projecting your image to the world. This is a world where it is possible to sell anything if packaged properly. In business, no matter what people come up with but unless they have a proper marketing strategy, their ideas will never be successful in the market.

Unless we strive for recognition and work for it, the world will never accept us regardless of our religion, caste, colour and sexuality. Our sexuality is not the only aspect that defines us. Don’t let it define you and don’t allow the world to do it either. How do handicapped people become successful in life? They direct their focus on what they have and work on enhancing their abilities. That’s how Beethoven composed his music despite being deaf. We all have talents and abilities, we just need to open our minds and ask ourselves what is it that we want to do with our lives. Kent Cullers is an individual worth knowing about in this context (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Cullers). He is just a regular guy who was totally blind from the time he was born and went on to head SETI, NASA’s highly advanced space program. The world around us is filled with such inspiring stories of people. When nothing could hold them back, why is your sexuality coming in your way and stopping you from becoming successful?

I will not accept you as L, G, B or T; I can accept you only as human beings. The world is also looking to do the same. The change has to come from within each one of you. Humans did not accept cats into their lives one fine day. It took thousands of years to reach the level of understanding and coexistence we have now. Tap into your talents and force your way through. Crack those entrance exams to get into the top engineering and medical colleges, business schools and civil services. Start your own businesses. This is a time when even small ideas are getting promoted through funding. Who is going to deny and stop you then? By asking to hug him, Akkai Padmashali was looking for acceptance from President Obama, not for herself but for the whole LGBT community. By touching us and asking for money, you are actually seeking our acceptance. Don’t beg the world for acceptance, bring the world towards you, like the cats do. Wrap yourself with your abilities, reveal your true self to the world and see what happens.

By the way, why do you care if LGBT is a crime in India or anywhere else? It is just a law and they say all laws are meant to be broken. Cheating on lawfully wedded partner is also a crime, but is the law acting as a deterrent for anyone? What do you hope to achieve by getting a legal stamp over your sexuality? A law in India will not liberate you from society’s discrimination. Is it about marrying your partner? Marriage is a social norm that has outlived it’s purpose by a long way. Be it in any sort of relationship, two individuals do not and should not need the consent of anyone to be in that relationship and no one should be bothered unless you and your relationship is creating any negative disruption in the society and is adversely affecting peoples’ lives.

Its not just you, the entire human race is confused about our purpose of existence. If you are confused about being L, G, B or T, then I should also be confused about why I was born straight. Understand one thing very clearly. Nothing exists in the Universe without a reason. There is a purpose to every event that happens in the cosmos. There has to be some purpose for the existence of each one of us. If no purpose exists, we would not be alive. There has to be reasons about your sexuality as well. Maybe it is not yet time for the reasons to be revealed. You are alive and breathing now and nothing else should matter to you. Shift your focus away from your sexuality and focus on becoming successful in life and you will force the world to shift it’s focus from your sexuality to your achievements. Become those cats. This transformation will not only bring you peace it will also make the world a better place to live.

The dead art called programming

There was a time not so long ago when programmers were respected and expertise in programming was revered. Now programming is not considered a big deal and good programmers are called geeks and dismissed as beings from another planet. This fall from grace is really unfortunate because the whole world of technology has evolved along unexpected lines. Dependency of business on technology is not so new, but explosive growth in hardware technology along with the development of advanced software applications has allowed many companies to enter the market and fuel intense competition.

I was never interested in computers but circumstances forced me to learn programming because that was supposedly the way forward at that time. I was never good at programming. I did a project in C language as part of my engineering undergraduate degree and I had quite a tough time with it. I went on and learnt C++ and Java, but I wasn’t convinced that I knew enough to write good programs. It was just a hunch then and I decided to explore further. It was at this point that I happened to read two books. “Inside the IBM PC” made me understand what programming truly is and “Mastering Windows NT Server 4” by Mark Minasi got me firmly hooked on to networking and operating systems.

I had the opportunity to do a business transformation assignment for a web development company recently. One of the most pressing issues they faced was with delivering results on time. The reasons were too obvious. IT has evolved into a lucrative job market in countries like India, so the limelight is firmly on monetary and other benefits. There are so many frameworks and processes in vogue these days, I keep wondering, what happened to writing structured code and doing simple things like writing comments. Websites are designed and delivered according to the clients’ desires, but no one stops to think that end users are the real clients, normal human beings, so the website design should be focused on them.

“Inside the IBM PC” was a revelation to me. I had studied a lot about the hardware designs of yore in my engineering course (because our course syllabus hadn’t been revised in a long time) and it was such a pain for me because I couldn’t figure out what I was reading. “Inside the IBM PC” solved most of the problems with my fundamental knowledge so I dug deeper and read interesting and eye opening facts. Like how the first C programs were run on computers with 360 KB memory and C++ programs were first executed on computers with 1 MB memory. Like when the mouse moves in the Windows screen, a paint brush in the background keeps following the mouse trail and paints the area back to its original colour.

What I realized was that programming is an art. I have seen my grandpa paint and I have understood that everything in life is about perspective, how we see things and the key to doing something right is to start simple and stick to the basics. Most programmers do not know where it all came from and how it evolved into what they see today. No one is curious or keen on knowing the roots. An essential aspect of programming is to optimize the use of underlying hardware resources which no one has to care now because hardware technology keeps getting advanced and cheaper. Now there are so many programming languages, tools and applications available, the decisions are taken from business perspectives and the most cost effective ones are chosen.

The art in programming has long vanished. Lack of knowledge and awareness coupled with intense business oriented market space has been a key factor. Android phones are so much in demand, yet there is no awareness that being open source, Android apps are made in different hardware environments and do not have good hardware baselines, resulting in improper hardware use and degraded mobile performance over time. The first thing that comes to my mind about programming is reading the story of Kent Cullers, who was blind from birth and who became the manager of NASA’s SETI projects to find extraterrestrial life. The story goes that when he was a student, he wrote programs, sent them to NASA and proved that what they were doing in one of their projects was wrong. It was all about getting the right perspective, being effective and being thorough. For me, that is the true spirit of programming, which has died an untimely death.