Forty years ago, I stepped onto the mythical Lakshman Jhula for the first time. Mythical, because Ram’s brother Lakshman is believed to have crossed the Ganga at this point over a jute rope bridge. It was also once the only way to Hindu pilgrim spots, Badrinath and Kedarnath. After crossing the precarious suspension bridge, I reached a winding footpath to Chaurasi Kutia (84 huts), Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram.
Memories of the ashram are some of the happiest from my days as a young journalist. They are also tinged with a bit of guilt. After all, the Maharishi gave me unfettered access, something that was not easily available to journalists at the time. But I considered his warmth and openness to be nothing more than a passport to what every journalist aspires for—a scoop. Maharishi himself was of secondary interest. The entire world’s interest was turned to John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—the Beatles, in their quest of a new image: “holy singers from the hermitage!”
It all began in 1967. I was in my 20s, a cub reporter with The Statesman. As the year was drawing to a close, there appeared, one day, a single-column notice in the paper that the Beatles were coming to India to spend time at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram. I sensed an opportunity and thought it might not be a bad idea to try and become the Maharishi’s disciple. It turned out he was in Delhi at the time, holding a camp at the Modern School campus—I went to see him. He was seated on a platform. I told him that I had problems—I had taken drugs and had even contemplated suicide. He grinned, and then whispered the secret mantra into my ear. I was meant to sit and chant it. The way I saw it, the Maharishi was friendly to me for two reasons: One, he was still relatively unknown and wanted some publicity. Two, I was a Muslim. That made me a rare and exotic disciple.
Saeed Naqvi (right) with Paul McCartney (left) of the band Beatles.
I began visiting him often. He was surrounded by all these other “sadhus”—disciples clad in white dhotis and cotton
chadars (cloth to cover the upper torso), with one shoulder exposed—who were his assistants. I wanted to win the sadhus over to make things easy for myself when the Beatles came and they, in turn, were looking for tips on how to manage the media during the visit. We got along.
When The Beatles finally arrived, they seemed to be following their manager Brian Epstein’s (their manager till 1967) dictum—the more you keep the media at arm’s length, the more attention you get. Along with them came a gaggle of foreign celebrities, including Mike Love of the Beach Boys, Mia Farrow and her sister Prudence, and Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan.