The Beatles went to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram to find peace. Paul Saltzman went
to piece together a broken heart. The results of their chance encounter for a
magical week in 1968 will come together in a new book by the now-established
filmmaker. Amit Roy reports from London



There is now a pretty solid body of evidence that for The Beatles, India was their
most creative period. When they were in Rishikesh for several weeks in February,
March and April of 1968, they wrote between 23 and 48 songs, 17 of which were
included in their White Album, one of their best known.

We know this from the account given by Paul Saltzman, now a distinguished Canadian
filmmaker, who went up to Rishikesh in February, 1968, and was included for a week
by The Beatles as part of their inner circle. Perhaps The Beatles felt sorry for
him, for Saltzman, then 24, had received a letter from his girlfriend who had dumped
him. Seeking solace for his painful heartbreak, he wandered up to the mountains and
found the ashram in Rishikesh. What he didn’t know was that The Beatles were also
holed up with there with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a ridiculous figure who
initially fooled the impressionable youngsters with his talk of Indian philosophy,
vegetarian food with no spice, transcendental meditation and the like. But The
Beatles, who by 1968, were just about the most recognisable people on the planet,
probably felt trapped by their fame and fortune. In Rishikesh, when Saltzman caught
up with them, they certainly were looking for some kind of escape.



NOW AND THEN: Paul Saltzman (top left); cover of his previous book (above); the
24-year-old Saltzman with Ringo Starr (left)FAB FOUR: (Clockwise from above:) George
Harrison; Ringo Starr, John Lennon and Paul McCartney; McCartney; Lennon with wife
Cynthia; Harrison at the ashram in Rishikesh

Paul McCartney was there with his girlfriend at the time, Jane Asher; John Lennon
with Cynthia Powell, his first wife, whom he had married when she had become
pregnant; Ringo Starr with Maureen Starkey, his first wife whom he, too, had married
when she had seen to it she had fallen pregnant as a way of getting him away from
competition; and George Harrison was there with his first wife, Patti(e) Boyd.
Another member of the group was Mia Farrow, the American actress who, like Saltzman,
was also nursing a broken heart because her marriage to Frank Sinatra had ended.
a
It has been said that 1968 was the year that rocked the world. That can be claimed
for most years but this was the period when anti-American riots protesting against
the United States’ Vietnam war erupted in capitals across the world, including
especially in front of the US embassy in Grosvenor Square.

It was a year scarred by the assassination of Martin Luther King and the late
President John F. Kennedy’s younger brother, Robert. Richard Nixon was elected
president that year. In Hollywood, Bullitt, starring Steve McQueen, was a hit film,
and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey won an Oscar for Best Special Visual
Effects. President Kennedy’s widow, Jacqueline, married the Greek shipping
millionaire, Aristotle Onassis. That was the year when Simon and Garfunkel sang Mrs
Robinson and Sound of Silence in The Graduate, starring Dustin Hoffman. In India,
Chowringhee was released.

For Saltzman, it proved a week that changed his life. For eight days, he had slept
in a tent outside the ashram which was out of bounds to most people because The
Beatles were inside. Then he was allowed in, given a 10-minute crash course in
meditation, and generally allowed to fend for himself. He spotted The Beatles and
introduced himself.

As a boy in Canada, he was familiar with their music and had danced to She Loves You
in the early 1960s, admired their album, Rubber Soul, and attended their concert in
Toronto in 1964. But he was not a groupie. “I walked over and said, ‘Do you mind if
I join you?’ And John looked over and said, ‘Sure, mate, pull up a chair.’ And Paul
pulled a chair in next to him and said, ‘Come and sit here.’”

After a bit of banter, he was mysteriously absorbed into their group. Later, he
asked the four, individually, whether he could take some pictures. “Paul said, ‘Go
right ahead, no problem.’”

Saltzman, who was on his first trip to India because he was doing a little sound
recording for a documentary being made by the Canadian Film Board, had an
inexpensive Pentax plus 50mm and 135mm lenses. Over the next seven days, he took
about 50 intimate photographs on Ektachrome 64 transparency of The Beatles, most of
which are now going into his book, The Beatles in India. This is an updated version,
with more text and pictures, of his first book, The Beatles in Rishikesh, which he
brought out four years go. He was lucky that The Beatles, who clearly did not feel
their privacy was being invaded by his presence, allowed Saltzman unfettered access.
Most probably, they sympathised with the agony of a young man suffering the pain of
a break-up.

In the ashram on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Ganges, The Beatles were busy
making music, in between periods of meditation. “They were there for different
reasons,” remembers Saltzman.

Harrison, who had by this time met Ravi Shankar and had spent months in Bombay
learning the sitar from the maestro, “was there to go deeper into his spirituality
and his understanding of the divine. John was there to get the secret of the meaning
of life, which, of course, does not exist in that form. Paul was there because he
was interested in meditation. It was helpful and fun to be all together. Ringo was
there out of group togetherness, a bit of curiosity but he was not particularly
interested in meditation.”

One moment remains etched in Saltzman’s memory. “George was practising the sitar and
it was just the two of us sitting together. George said ­ he said this without any
ego, (he was) a very calm, very wonderful man ­ ‘Like we are The Beatles, after all,
aren’t we? We have all the money we could ever dream of, we have all the fame you
could ever wish for, but it isn’t love, it isn’t health, it isn’t peace inside, is
it?” For four working-class lads from Liverpool, this was probably the revelation at
Rishikesh.

The four moved on to new women in their lives. And this year, Cynthia is publishing
her revised biography of Lennon, while his second wife, Yoko Ono, is helping with
the production of a musical on his life. Saltzman is providing his own account of
The Beatles in India (the German publishing firm, Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, is
bringing out one edition, while the author is releasing a special box set, done up
in Indian raw silk, through his own website).

“The sentence George said to me impacted on me hugely so I have never forgotten
that,” says Saltzman.

In 1968, he returned to Canada, became a distinguished television producer and
director, won distinction for his documentaries and such TV comedy or action series
as Danger Bay and My Secret Identity. His 26-part documentary series, Spread Your
Wings, showing how creative talent and skills are passed on from one generation to
the next in different cultures, took him to 22 countries. He has now been to India
“may-be 50 times”.

On his fifth trip, he met Deepa Mehta, who moved to Canada with him after they were
married in Delhi in 1973. The marriage has now ended but their daughter, Devyani,
who read human sciences at Hertford College, Oxford, is now 25 and obviously close
to her father.

Despite the divorce from Saltzman, Deepa did once tell me, when she was in London to
promote Earth, starring Aamir Khan, that she owed a great deal to her former
husband.

“We are not friends,” Saltzman warns me. “I met her while I was shooting a
documentary in India. She also asked me (to show her) how to make films which I did.
That does not mean I made her, she made herself.”

I reassure Saltzman that when Deepa had touched briefly on her marriage, she had
indeed spoken warmly about her husband. “That’s nice,” acknowledges Saltzman.

It seems the whole Beatles experience has now become mixed up in Saltzman’s mind
with the ups and downs in his own life. As for the photographs he took, he returned
home to Toronto and tossed them to one side. “I put the pictures away and I actually
forgot about them completely,” he explains.

When Devyani was eight, he did tell her bedtime Beatles’ tales, which she suddenly
remembered at 18, when she, along with three of her friends, had discovered The Fab
Four, as successive generations have done. She was the one who persuaded her father
to find the photographs which were located after an exhaustive hunt.

“You know, Dad, they are great,” remarked Devyani. “You should really do something
with them.”