Self-Engineered
Intricate systems govern lives. There is the visible system of a professional career, with its linear paths and expectations, that screams conformity, and the hidden system of personal identity, with its innate truths and invisible layers. For most, these systems exist as one parallel graph. For Paras Vats, they are two fronts in the same campaign. His narrative details two distinct transitions: one of leaving a stable IT career as a high-value network engineer, a recognized position in Indian society. The other one is undertaking a gender transition to live as the fierce man Paras has always been. Both acts were intertwined maneuvers, requiring actions of rebellion to break free from a societal pattern of questionable expectations. His campaign of self-authorship was executed with the cool, debugging logic of an engineer while delivered through the passionate expression of a bold man who stands by his identity. Paras treats every obstacle, be it family pressure, societal hypocrisy, or bureaucratic absurdity, as a systemic flaw to be analyzed and overcome with calculated action.
His journey forces a critical inquiry into the nature of identity itself. He is a systems analyst who has turned his professional mindset inward, applying it to the arbitrary shortfall of human life. Can a single individual debug a society that runs on outdated code? His life is an exercise in hacking these hostile systems from within, not for the sake of chaos, but to create the space required to live authentically. It reveals an operating system built on strategic action, where lived experience is the ultimate form of expertise. Every choice is a conscious move toward a defined objective. The question his story poses is a fundamental one for any human. What does it take to become the architect of your system when the world has already assigned you a role you could never own?"
"One day, I realized that, just by doing this job, I would not be able to help other people like me".
Leaving the “Comfort Zone”
For a leader who admittedly "can't follow someone's instructions for long," a five-year tenure as a network engineer in a multinational corporation seems contradictory. In a society that places immense value on a stable, high-status career, his IT path appears to be a betrayal of the very conformity that Paras Vats’s life is a rebellion against. But his concession was a calculated maneuver. From his college days, Paras was the only one in his class of sixty who declared he would "never gonna do a job" in his life. His decision to take a corporate role was therefore less a surrender than a strategic high-order choice. The IT job was never a career for Paras. It was a Trojan Horse. It was the conventional offering that camouflaged his purpose, to gain the financial independence and stability required to fund his gender transition. This deliberate step reveals the core of his operating system. It is a pragmatism forged in a hostile environment, where every choice must be a strategic calculation to promote his campaign for self-realization.
The calculus was sharp and logical. Paras faced two competing timelines, each with its own struggle. The first was to follow his entrepreneurial spirit, to "start a dairy farm or something," but this would involve years of financial uncertainty, delaying his non-negotiable personal transition. The second path was to take the corporate job. This required him to leave his home, move to a new city, and temporarily subordinate his innate leadership spirit. He made the engineer's choice. He optimized for the most critical objective. The corporate job was the most efficient tool for the task. He needed a stable platform from which he could pivot his radical but uncertain physical alignment. Ironically, this supportive company, with its favorable policies and understanding colleagues, became his central "comfort zone". Yet it was a comfort he sought only to give him the security to undertake the most uncomfortable transformation imaginable. This arrangement was always temporary, a fact communicated so clearly that his manager always knew he didn’t come to stay. The day Paras’ book launched, his manager predicted it would be his last month, and he was right. The platform had served its purpose. The first phase of his self-engineered life was successfully completed.
"What was the reason behind that? I wanted to start my transition".
29 Years of “Lived That Life”
A career is typically measured by a simple, arithmetic value: years of professional experience. It is a number listed on a résumé, a quantifiable proxy for value. This is the alien logic of the corporate world, a system that values defined roles and predictable trajectories. But this system has no value for a different, personal expertise, one forged not in an office but in the reality of daily rebellion. Paras’ upbringing challenges the narrow corporate definition of value. His authority is not derived from his tenure as an engineer. It is built on a different timeline altogether, a résumé that started the minute Paras denied his mother’s request to wear a dress.
Paras' philosophy crystallized during an interview for a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion role. The first question was predictable: “How many years of experience do you have working with people from DEI?”. Paras’s response was a radical reframing of the question itself. He countered that the interviewer was looking at the wrong number. The five years on his corporate résumé were not incidental, but his true qualification was the twenty-nine years he had spent living as a trans man in a hostile world. This is his 29-Year Résumé. It is a curriculum that includes navigating a patriarchal society that wished he had never been born, fighting for his fundamental right to breathe, to get an education, and facing down death threats from relatives who were supposed to love him. His expertise was not learned in a seminar. His diploma, his certifications were earned on a daily battlefield. He has not just worked with the community because, for all Paras knew, he was the community.
This is an honest assertion. It argues that lived experience is not a “soft skill” or a supplement to a traditional career. It is the most rigorous qualification of all. While a corporate professional learns ever-changing labels and truths about the community through studies and secondhand accounts, Paras’s knowledge is visceral and immediate. He has “lived that life”. His existence has been an exercise in the principles of inclusion and advocacy that DEI departments attempt to codify. He did not need to learn the theory of how to create a safe space because his very survival has always depended on his ability to create one for himself and the people around him. This redefinition of expertise challenges the foundation of measuring human capital. It posits that the most difficult struggles forge the most authentic leaders, and that a life spent fighting for one’s identity is the only proof of qualification a survivor needs.
"But, you should see the experience that I've had over the past 29 years".
A Mother’s Love
The most vulnerable fight for a child is experienced at home. While Paras waged a public campaign for his identity, a more significant battle was taking place with his parents. This domestic habitat presented two conflicting forces that would define his trajectory. On one front was his father, a man bound by the rigid logic of societal honor. On the other was his illiterate mother, his strongest and unconditional ally, the woman whose support became his declared “source of strength” for Paras' battle. This schism is a powerful deconstruction of the nature of support itself, posing a critical question: Does innate empathy transcend formal education when it comes to fundamental issues of the human scope?
His father’s position was conditioned by deep-seated fear rooted in the patriarchal value system of his community. His primary concern was "what people will say," a fear that his son’s happiness would come at the cost of the family’s honor. Paras attempted a dialogue for years, reaching out birthday after birthday, only to be met with stoic rejection and pleas to not "ruin" the family. This painful impasse culminated in a final rooftop confrontation, where Paras had to choose between his father’s approval and his authentic life. By choosing himself, he accepted an estrangement that continues to this day. His father represents the voice of the system, a world where pride is valued more than life itself, even the one belonging to one’s own child.
His mother’s support, however, was absolute. She possessed a devastatingly simple logic that dismantled the hypocrisy around her. Her love didn’t require a degree or even the ability to read or write. When close relatives threatened Paras’s life, it was his mother who banished them, declaring that she needed her kids, not the approval of those who would harm them. Her defense of Paras to the community was true in moral clarity: "What this child has taken from you? ... He just asked that I want to live my life". This fierce protection was rooted in a deep, spiritual bond. To her, Paras was the reincarnation of a son she had lost, a child who had come back to her. Her love was not conditional on societal acceptance. It was a pure, unconditional force that gave Paras a sanctuary where societal support failed.
"Don't come to our home, we don't need people like you. I need my kids. If they are happy, I am happy".
All Tools Available
Fortified by his mother's unconditional support, Paras Vats turned his analytical gaze outward. He never saw himself as a victim of a hostile world, but as an engineer determined to debug a system that got it wrong at its core. When asked about the one bug in the societal operating system he would fix, his response was immediate. The flaw is not a lack of rules or religion, but human motivation. He argues that people have an obsessive impulse to control the lives of others, a tendency rooted in a simple, devastating truth: "People are not sad because of their own problems, they are sad because others are happy". This insight shapes the basis of his philosophy of engagement. He treats society not as an immovable force, but as a corroded system to be analyzed, hacked, and strategically navigated.
His toolkit for this task is pragmatism. To counter the argument that his transition is "against religion," he does not enter a debate on faith. Instead, he redirects the critics' sacred texts back at them. He calmly deploys the stories of Lord Vishnu’s transition into Mohini, Lord Shiva’s form as Ardhanarishvara (half-male, half-female), and Lord Rama’s special blessing upon the transgender community. It is a simple and therefore effective counter-measure, a logical checkmate that exposes the hypocrisy of a society that reveres these figures in temples but condemns their embodiment in their own homes.
This same pragmatic logic applies to his navigation of broken bureaucracies. He recounts the "trauma and harassment" of navigating an airport when his physical appearance as a man conflicted with the "female" marker on his documents. Faced with an incomplete system, he made the engineer's choice. He performed a cost-benefit analysis. On one side was the emotional cost of shaving his earned beard, which he described as an "emotion." On the other hand was the certainty of being "traumatized" by uniformed officials. He chose the lesser of two violations. He sacrificed his identity to the outer world to bypass a systemic flaw and achieve his objective. He paid the price he called “tactical workaround”. This is the essence of the pragmatic self: a leader who uses all available tools, be it sacred texts or Occam’s razor, to debug a world that was not ready for him. 29 years of creating space for himself and enough room for others to follow.
"People are not sad because of their problems, they are sad because others are happy".
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What I Learned From Paras G Vats
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Lived experience is the ultimate qualification. The most profound expertise isn't found on a résumé but is forged in the reality of a daily struggle. A 29-year journey of survival is a more rigorous qualification for leadership in your field than any professional tenure.
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Pragmatism can be a revolutionary tool. A seemingly conventional path, like a corporate job, can be strategically used to achieve a revolutionary goal. The most effective rebellion is often calculated using a system's resources to achieve an outcome the system opposes.
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Innate empathy transcends formal education. Unconditional support is not a product of education but of a deep moral clarity. A person without formal schooling can possess a more powerful and effective logic than a society bound by rigid rules.
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The desire to control others is a symptom of unhappiness. The core "bug" in the societal operating system is not a lack of rules or morality. It is the impulse to control others' lives, a tendency rooted in the fact that people are often not sad because of their own problems, but because others are happy.
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Self-authorship is a strategic campaign. Creating an authentic life in a hostile environment is not a single act but a continuous campaign. A leader must use all available tools, sacred texts or Occam’s razor, to debug their environment and create space to exist.