On April 10, 1970, the Beatles split up with this announcement: “Spring is here and Leeds play Chelsea tomorrow and Ringo and George and John and Paul are alive and well and full of hope. The world is still spinning and so are we and so are you. When the spinning stops — that’ll be the time to worry. Not before.” Well, in the four decades and more since, we are alive in a world without two of the Beatles, John and George. Paul and Ringo are well and performing, which gives us hope — and the books haven't stopped coming.
Ajoy Bose, best known for his biography of Mayawati ( Behenji ), and a book on the Emergency, marks the 50th anniversary of the band’s visit to a Rishikesh ashram in Across the Universe: The Beatles in India . He leaves the study of the music to the best known writers chronicling the Beatles like Ian MacDonald ( Revolution in the Head ).
About their India visit, there are several tomes — and the band and their family members, including George Harrison’s first wife Pattie Boyd, have also reminisced about it. Bose adds to the list with the story of why and how the Beatles arrived in India, and the impact it had on their lives and music with the help of many resources already available and fresh interviews. He dedicates the book to his sister-in-law, who as a teenager landed up at Rishikesh while the Beatles were there, writing in her diary of the time Harrison offered her a blanket and she said no, “I would regret refusing to share George’s blanket all my life.” The Beatles’ first encounter with Indian traditions and culture was on the sets of their second film
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George picked up a sitar on set and thought “this is a funny sound.” That “accidental” encounter would finally lead George to sitar maestro Ravi Shankar. But even before meeting Shankar, George would play the sitar in Revolver, “the first album to present a new, growing Beatles to the world,” in the John Lennon composition, Norwegian Wood. The band would soon learn about transcendental meditation and land up at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram. Bose draws up a fascinating account of the Beatles and the giggling yogi’s astute market sense. Musically, it was a productive phase in India with the Beatles writing almost 40 songs including many that would feature in the White Album like Dear Prudence. This charming read could have had some pictures of the Beatles in Rishikesh, but it’s a minor quibble, and there are other books for that.
Across the Universe: The Beatles in India ; Ajoy Bose, Penguin/ Viking, ₹699.