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Back in school, my best friend and me spent hours listening to music. While he always loved pop and had a great music system, which’d play everything from George Michael to the Pet Shop Boys to A-Ha, I was always interested in music that had 'real' drums — The Police, for one (even at that point of time, I liked a resonant, 'real' drum sound over the flat, reverb-fed 80s glam sound).
It wasn't until a year later that I actually mustered enough courage to tell my father that I was gonna spend Sunday mornings at "drum class", under this guy who was playing with a local rock band called Fahrenheit. They nailed a very cool (or it seemed at least at that point of time) version of Eat The Rich, and I was very impressed.
In any case, after that fateful first sitting, my Sundays weren't ever the same again.
I loved walking to the class, in Mandeville Gardens, from my Dover Lane residence. At 14, I was pretty sure that I'm gonna be playing drums for the rest of my life. There was a curious pity at my mates watching Mahabharata; I liked to imagine, as always, that I was gaining entry into this strange and mysterious world of rhythms, melodies and harmonies which fellow-mortals my age weren't even aware of. At least the non-musical ones at that.
The following year, just passing my Class X boards, I walked into Kochuda's (http://theorientexpress.tripod.com/) class. That was another big event as far as my drumming life goes.