Music is at the heart of FAINT PROMISE OF RAIN. The setting for the story—16th century Rajasthan in Northwest India—had already been laid down by multiple visits to that stunning part of the world, where temples and fortresses rise up from golden sand, where textiles are jewel-toned, and the sky is devastatingly blue. Take away the power lines, and everything else looks much as it must have five hundred years ago. The next story layer came in a very different shape: a class in kathak dance, a classical storytelling art from North India. The moment I set foot into the dance studio, I was smitten. Jingling ankle bells, syncopated rhythms of the tabla (drums), precise footwork, lightning fast turns punctuated by perfect stillness. The moments of silence in music sometimes speak more than the notes themselves. In kathak, the dancer becomes an instrument. In addition to studying dance technique and compositions, the dancer must become intimately familiar with the cycles in which Indian classical music is structured—the 16 beat cycle (tintal), the 14 beat (dhammar), the 10 beat (jhaptal) and many others—and develop an awareness at all times of where in the cycle she finds herself. Much as a writer…