While my guitar gently weeps...

An ascetic sits with eyes closed and hands raised to hold a human skull. He looks ominous. Another ‘sadhu’ sits with a chillum, smoke bellowing and swirling around him. They both resemble the ‘Sadhu babas’ or ascetics with dreadlocks and ash-smeared bodies who roam the streets of the ‘yoga capital of the world’, the picturesque Himalayan town of Rishikesh.

These two ‘babas’, however, are a couple of graffiti paintings on the walls of a ruinous structure that once was a functioning ashram within the Rajaji National Park.

Set up in 1963 by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to train students in the Transcendental Meditation Technique, Chaurasi Kutia, or 84 huts, now popularly known as ‘The Beatles Ashram’, overlooking the eastern bank of river Ganga, came to disuse in the 1990s. The ashram was in the news in 1968 when the English rock band The Beatles came to stay. Introduced to Indian culture by the sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar, the quartet, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John Lennon and Ringo Starr came to meditate at the ashram. Their stay was exceptionally productive with them composing almost 30 songs that later were featured in their ‘White Album’. Several other celebrities such as songwriter Donovan, actress Mia Farrow, and Paul Horn followed soon after, seeking solace through meditation.

An iron gate leads to an area overgrown with weeds. At one end is a ruinous three-storied structure and a path leads to egg-shaped cave-like buildings clad with pebbles from the river.  These are double-decker residential units with a small staircase leading to the upper part and are meant for meditation. The two dilapidated three-storied hostel buildings ‘Anand’ and ‘Siddhi’ Bhavan feature two egg-shaped domes for meditation on their roofs. The ashram premise has a separate post office, a large kitchen building, a printing press and a conference hall. The expansive ashram was equipped with facilities catering to Western sensibilities.

After it was abandoned, the ashram became a haunt for The Beatles fans, who left graffiti on the walls. In 2012, Street artist Pan Trinity Das started a project, The Beatles Cathedral Gallery, to commemorate the music band. However, the forest department curtailed the project only to later re-invite the artist along with four others in 2015 to restart it as the Beatles Ashram Mural Project as a tribute to the band.

The walls at the ashram now hide in their dereliction some truly eclectic art. At the conference hall, The Beatles and Maharishi stare back from two of the four walls. A black-and-white-bearded sadhu and a monk look on from the roof domes at the hostels. Pandit Ravi Shankar sits strumming his sitar on one of the walls while a woman meditates peacefully. An abstract composition with John Lennon’s quote ‘When you look up at the sky and see a cloud, think of me’ encompasses the wall of a meditation cave. Shiva, the greatest yogi, adorns the wall of the lecture hall, Ved Bhavan, in a meditative pose. A shawl-clad old man occupies a pavilion. A tiger holds your gaze on one wall, while a leopard roars on the other. A partial ‘Gayatri Mantra’ features on yet another wall.

Several such graffiti art embellish other walls throughout the ashram, attracting and inspiring artists across different genres. This connection with the art and music of Rishikesh combined with its picturesque location often brings many international and domestic emerging artists to the foothills of the Himalayas, sometimes to participate in ‘Chitrashaala’, an artists’ residency organised twice in Rishikesh by Ashish Vohra, founder of a hotel group, and internationally acclaimed artist Avijit Mukherjee. “It is an apt setting for inspiring the artists,” says Vohra.

The year 2018 marked 50 years of the arrival of The Beatles to the ashram. It was celebrated with an exhibition titled ‘The Beatles in India’, similar to the one held in the Liverpool Museum. In 2023, ‘The Beatles and Ganga Festival’ was organised by the state government to renovate and develop the ashram as a cultural site for tourism.

However, for now, the ashram lies shrouded in undergrowth, forsaken and forlorn, with its graffiti art as the only bright spark of hope, waiting to be explored by more artists and fans of the iconic band.