Thinking about my fingers while hitting something with my fingers might be a bit much for my brain! But actually it seems quite intuitive to layout a beat pattern that way. Thanks for prompting me to search what Tabla is, there is some great artists out there.
Actually, you don't do those things at the same time. The finger thing is mostly for clarifying the beat patterns before you start playing. On the Tabla, or actually in Northern Indian music, you do things like play a 27 beat bar and a 16 beat bar at the same time, and pseudo merging back on the 80th beat (16x4 and 27x3-1).
