Once upon a time when gay meant merry, joyous, cheerful, happy; but now..

I go back to my high-school days in a time machine. It was late 1980s and early 1990s. I read a story that has the following two sentences:
Once upon a time there was king. He was always gay...

Being gay at that time meant being cheerful, full of merriment. I use my time machine to come back to the current time. Today is June 29th, 2009. This morning the newspapers were full of news and photo-graphs of many gay people. It was a front-page news in all the news papers. Many gay people organized a parade (all the newspapers made a spelling mistake and they printed it as gay-pride. I think nowadays there is scarcity of good proof-readers in news-paper houses!) in Bangalore yesterday and it got full media attention. I was happy thinking that finally newspapers have started writing stories about some happy people in the front-page instead of the daily dosage of news full of murder, rape, bomb-blast etc. I was happier when I came to know that similar gay-parades took place in major cities across the world. I felt that at least some happy people wanted to display their happiness strongly and collectively to the enemies of the humanity - the terrorists, religious fundamentalists, racists, and many other evil elements that threaten humanity these days.

I turned my newspaper and saw the picture of a very beautiful girl (along with some other girls) with a placard in her hand with the message "repeal IPC 377". I thought that this girl must be from IT industry and writing system software code. She is probably appealing to IEEE or USENIX to do away with certain Inter Process Communication technique. My Linux-friendly-mind quickly translates 377 to --wxrwxrwx. But then I was flummoxed by the news that said that Veerappa Moily, Cabinet Minister in the Department of Law, Government of India, will soon take a decision on IPC 377. Then I read that certain Muslim cleric has opposed repealing IPC 377! I was completely at sea. I wondered when Veerappa Moily and the Muslim cleric started writing Unix Inter Process Communication code! Due to recession, our programming jobs (I call it thinking-typewriter's jobs) are in peril. Now we're threatened by our in-house politicians and clerics too! I was calculating how much agricultural land my dad has in his village. I see no future but to go back to farming if everyone starts writing software programs in India. I was lost in my thought when G's banter about my absent-mindedness woke me up. I told her: it's time for us to pack up and go back to our native village and start farming. She asked me what did I drink last night that the hangover was still not over. I told her that I was frightened of the job prospects since everyone around now was talking about IPC. I showed her the news items, including statements of Moily and the cleric. She said they were talking about Indian Panel Code and chided me for being a nerd all the time!

I then went back to my all-weather, trust-worthy buddy named Google and ask him what was the section 377 of Indian Panel Code. Google told me Indian Panel Code 377 considers gay activity as a criminal case. Come on, why on earth the IPC section impinges upon someone's right to be joyous and cheerful! I smelt something wrong. I then approached another buddy Dictionary.reference.com and asked what was the meaning of the word gay. Amongst several meanings, one is described in uppercase letters and underlined: HOMO.....L!

It seems the world has changed a lot since my high-school days. Dictionaries still say that gay means merry, joyous, cheerful, happy etc. But then there is a more powerful meaning to this word. The later meaning has come to be associated with the word gay predominantly now.

I do have a liberal mind. But I still cannot accept the new meaning of the word gay. I consider it to be unnatural, against the law of the Nature. But at the same time, I don't deem it as a criminal offence too. Section 377 of IPC is too draconian.

I read the same story of my high-school days about the king who was gay. But hey, my impression of the same king is different now. I soliloquy - the king too was gay!