In the fikr - in what rhythm you began, you should continue to breathe. By losing the rhythm much is lost. Music is the miniature of life's harmony in sound in a concentrated sense. The person who has no rhythm physically cannot walk well; he often stumbles. The breath, the speech, the step, all have rhythm. The person who has no rhythm in his emotions falls easily into a spell, such as laughter, or crying, or anger, or fear. We should practice rhythm in our lives, so that we may not be so patient and yielding that everybody takes the best of us, nor so carried away by our enthusiasm and frankness that we say things that are undesirable in the world, nor so meek and mild that we fall into flattery, timidity and cowardice. Then, by and by, we may understand the rhythm of emotions, the rhythm of thoughts, then the rhythm of feeling. Then a person comes into relation with the inner rhythm which is the true meaning of the world.

• Hazrat Inayat Kahn

So to get my blood boiling, I have decided to go on a drum trip. I have had the pleasure of watching some fine drum players in my life, starting with Shivmani, A.R.Rehman's drummer back at Kharagpur many years ago. This guy had about 50 different drum/percussion instruments in a circle, his drum universe he called it and laid out rythms on top of rythms. It was just pure joy to watch him, play out the rythms in his blood.

Then a year later, I had the pleasure of watching Bikram Ghosh, a great tabla player, tear it up in a concert with Vishwa Mohan Bhatt(who by the way won a world music grammy for A Meeting By The River). He broke a finger nail, simply put on a band aid and continued beating those tablas. Rythm. Never been to an indian classical music concert like that in my life after that and perhaps never will.

Then the next time I heard some great drumming was by Jim Donovan, the Rusted Root drummer, play drum jams in concert here last year. Those are sheer ecstasy, where in one hopes the drumming never stops.

Then at the Silk Road Folk Life Festival at Washington DC, last year, I managed to get to sit in a drumming workshop wherein various drumming techniques all across the silk road were explained. That was wonderful and insightful.

After that few months ago, at a program I saw a group of African drummers, they were from Mali I think, perform. There was joy and sadness and everything else in that drumming. They even played the drum telephone for us, as drums are used in various ways to send various messages.

Perhaps in one important way Western classical music fails is by lacking a real drum section. I mean in this whole bunch of violions and such, they usually have one measly drum and a few cymbals.

For most people I realise that drumming is something they might hear on some techno or hip hop cd and forget all about it after they dance to it. This is the sad and limited part because it rarely allows the rythm to penetrate and change the stuff inside.

Now I wish someone could send me Mickey Hart's(Greatful Dead's drum guru) book, Planet Drum.

May the rythm beat strong as ever!