The Beatles' acclaimed documentary screened in Kolkata

As a part of its Culture Fridays initiative, the British Council Kolkata hosted a special screening of the critically acclaimed documentary The Beatles and India on January 17.
Directed by author and political journalist Ajoy Bose, the 2021 documentary film is rooted in Bose’s book Across the Universe: The Beatles in India, which traces the path of The Beatles to India in the 1968 and their sojourn at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram in Rishikesh.
At an age where information isn’t rare, crafting a documentary film that would offer a deeper glimpse into the lives of George, John, Paul, and Ringo seems to be an ever-increasingly difficult task, as rare footage becomes commonplace and expert commentary is debated upon.
Bose’s project sidesteps this issue as he keeps his focus steady on the India leg of the Fab Four’s lives, in the late 1960s, just after the release of Magical Mystery Tour (1967) and right before Woodstock became a global phenomenon: a time when India was just about opening up to Western influences in music, film, photography and fashion. While the Beatles’ impact on Indian youth – reflected in the pop group the Savages (featuring Biddu) and actor Shammi Kapoor flaunting a Beatles wig in Janwar (1965) – remains undeniable, Bose’s film also explores the paradox of how the band was tired of the West’s capitalist culture and experimented with drugs before turning towards a spiritual path through the Maharishi and his brand of transcendental meditation. India, to them, symbolised a new reality – till it didn’t.
In an attempt to capture this osmosis, Bose involves a number of contemporary figures from these overlapping worlds and his own forte of print journalism, with the right dash of celebrity. The result is a nuanced, well-paced documentary that moves along just fine, despite a few questions, and is focused around February and April, 1968.
Thus, we get glimpses of the supergroup with the Maharishi via a Raghu Rai photograph, Kabir Bedi as an AIR correspondent confronting the legendary manager Brian Epstein, memoirs of rooftop super-jams featuring the four with (Scottish singer-songwriter) Donovan, interviews with Ravi Shankar on his disciple George Harrison, Mia Farrow drinking from the Ganges and her sister Prudence in company, and the past glory and the present-day ruins of the Rishikesh ashram. Darker undertones of sexual misconduct are also touched upon. The final fallout between The Beatles and their gurudev is looked at, though not analysed in detail. To symbolise this state of nothingness, perhaps, came The White Album (1968).
Bose’s innate journalistic eye for detail raises the bar, and the emphasis he tends to place on the local to narrate a global tale works well. His interview of the proprietors of Pratap Music Store in Dehradun is an example of this well-planned device; throughout the documentary, there are numerous such instances. His interviews of legends like Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma, of past icons like Sushmit Bose and Biddu, along with contemporary figures in Indian independent music, from Monica Dogra to Neil Mukherjee, from Tejas and Mali to Benny Dayal, are a testament to his pulse on the now.
The Beatles and India, then, is not just a documentary on the English supergroup. It becomes a documentation of a certain time and place in the history of culture.