John McLaughlin (left) meets Ranjit Barot over lunch at Café at The Quarter. Pics/Atul Kamble

A long-distance flight that landed early in the morning, a lengthy check through customs, and four email interviews and a telephonic one later, John McLaughlin walks in with Ranjit Barot for lunch at a café in Girgaum. The former is a guitar legend while the latter is a virtuoso drummer, and the two of them first met in 2006 at the Abbaji Festival, organised in Mumbai every year in memory of tabla maestro Ustad Alla Rakha Khan. There, McLaughlin was so taken in by Barot's western drumming that he later roped him in as a member of John McLaughlin and the Fourth Dimension, his latest project. And ever since, the two have forged a musical relationship that thrives on the symbiosis between the Englishman's deep-rooted India connection and Barot's unabashed western sensibilities. Here, they settle down for a chat that delves into what the term "fusion" actually means, the benefits of being vegetarian, and the use of psychotropic substances.