It’s a fun question, isn’t it? Simple, harmless, and oddly revealing. But every time I hear it, I can’t help but smile because it reminds me how much we humans love binaries. We like to divide things neatly: yes or no, success or failure, cat or dog. As an engineer who has spent years working with systems built on pure logic, I often think about how different and yet similar, life is to the machines we create.

From Zeros and Ones to Infinite Shades

Computers, for all their sophistication, are built on something profoundly simple: ones and zeros. Everything — from your favorite app to artificial intelligence — boils down to combinations of these two states, processed through logic gates. These gates don’t feel or wonder. They evaluate. They decide whether a signal passes or not — yes or no, high or low, true or false. And from that binary foundation, the digital world emerges: structured, predictable, and consistent.

In contrast, life refuses to stay within that clarity. There are no fixed logic gates for emotion, ambition, or meaning. You can be joyful and anxious in the same moment. You can fail in the eyes of society and still be growing. You can love both, cats and dogs. Life runs on analog signals — fluid, continuous, overlapping. There’s noise, interference, and beautiful unpredictability.

When a Farmer Asks Me for a Straight Answer

At Saurally Solar, I often get calls from farmers asking, “Sir, how many hours will this solar water water pump run in a day?” It’s such a straightforward question — and yet, it doesn’t have a straightforward answer.

Technically, the logic controlling that solar pump is built on the same binary foundation — microcontrollers processing 0s and 1s, switching transistors, managing voltage and current through clean digital control. But the input that drives it? That’s pure nature, SUN. It depends on the sunlight, the weather, wind speed, dust, cloud cover, and even the time of year. No two days produce identical energy curves. The system’s logic is binary, but the world it depends on is not.

So, I explain it to the farmer this way: “Sir, your pump runs as long as the sun smiles that day.” That blend of precision and unpredictability, logic meeting life — is what fascinates me most about what I do.

The Engineer Who Learned to Let Go of the Binary

Coming from an electronics background, I used to admire the perfection of systems — precise voltages, clean outputs, measurable efficiencies. My work in solar and renewable energy is rooted in science, but also deeply connected to nature, where perfection doesn’t come from rigidity, it comes from balance. When I founded Saurally Solar, my goal wasn’t just to build clean energy systems, but to build sustainable lives around them and at the same time empowering rural communities, creating jobs, and nurturing skills. That’s when I realized something: the world isn’t wired like a circuit. You can’t design people or purpose with a binary blueprint. Nature itself thrives in gradients just like sunlight diffuses, wind fluctuates, ecosystems adapt. There are no clean 0s and 1s out there, only evolving harmony.

Maybe that’s why I enjoy playing with pets rather than owning one. Not because of indecision, but because I appreciate both energies. A dog’s loyalty and a cat’s independence reflect two poles of the same current that flows through life. Computers process; humans feel. And while a digital circuit can compute faster than any human, it can’t experience the wonder of diving into a lake on a cold night, hiking in the lush green forest of Nagarhole — or the chaos of a dog running straight into a puddle.

Living Between the Ones and Zeros

So, are you a cat person or a dog person? Maybe you’re both. Or neither. Maybe you’re something else entirely, and that’s okay. Because while computers need binary to function, humans need ambiguity to live. We exist in the spaces between on and off — in empathy, curiosity, and change. That’s what makes life beautifully, unapologetically human.