My Percussion Dreams

 I focus on the layers of drum beats 

When I listen to the songs 

I started my tryst with percussion 

By making beats on a wooden bench

As a kid, emulating tabla in mind 

Given my interest, my father let me learn tabla

I loved those fast notes and tried to grasp

But I was bad at byhearting the notes 

So my learning was slow 

I was so insecure about my tabla skills

That I skipped meeting the legendary singer Yesudas

When he came to meet the music students

It remains a regret that I didn't play for him

When the high school became more important

I had to take a break from the lessons 

I did perform before audiences 

With contrasting  fortunes

I used to jam along with some nice beaty songs 

Then I fell in love with drums 

Bought drum sticks and joined a class

After learning the basics for a few months I quit 

I have two pairs of drum sticks waiting for me to play

Maybe I will learn drums again

And fix the tabla to play it again 

As beats in songs still slip my heart to beat the desk

And I dream to play beats in front of an audience again

Most people follow their musical aspirations. I have left my percussion learning midway. The beats of songs still lure me to try beating the desk. I want to make up for an embarrassing tabla performance in front of a packed audience someday. The images are taken by Carlos Castilla and By Heaven. 

Internet Explorer

 

Goodbye to Internet Explorer

I still remember the first time I went 

To an internet cafe with a friend 

To create an email id 

The slow buffering browser became

A part of my life 

As it was installed as the primary browser

In most the places

You had the monopoly as you came with MS Windows

When I had a monthly internet browsing card

I used to sift through countless web pages 

Checking for sports and other news 

While chatting on some messenger 

I remember browsing at home through 

Dial-up internet at home 

You buffered eternally slow 

While I searched for engineering topics

For my presentation  at college 

Then I moved on to other internet browsers 

With the availability of broadband internet 

But still browsed with you for nostalgia at times

Your monopoly ended when Opera, Mozilla, and Chrome 

Made inroads into the browsers' landscape 

Now that you're gone

I must say, you were very underappreciated

For the job you did during the internet revolution

Though internet explorer was hated by the people due to its slowness and bad features, it played a huge role in the internet revolution. Its monopoly was down to the fact that it came with the Microsoft operating systems and most of the computers had Microsoft OS. People craved better browsers with better features. Microsoft was eternally slow to update IE and others made better browsers and IE ended up in the bin. Microsoft opted to create Bing and IE was bound for ignominy.