Rikhi Ram & Sons: another Now and Then Beatles story

On a dull July afternoon in 1966, the Fab Four walked into Rikhi Ram & Sons. They understood music well, even knew the stringed instruments that dotted the shop

“Sometimes I would think that my father was just boasting about meeting The Beatles, about them being here in our shop... But it is all true, of course,” said 56-year-old Ajay Sharma, with a laugh, seated inside his cosy musical instruments shop in Delhi’s Connaught Place (CP).

A photograph of The Beatles along with Bishan Dass, owner of Rikhi Ram Musical Instruments Store, displayed inside the store at Connaught Place in New Delhi. (Hindustan Times)

On a dull July afternoon in 1966 – seven months before Sharma was born – the Fab Four walked into Rikhi Ram & Sons in CP. They understood music well, even knew the stringed instruments that dotted the shop.

But little did Bishan Dass, Sharma’s father, know at the time that the four men standing in his modest store that afternoon were Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. “Minutes later, my father’s friend told him who they were. They were The Beatles. And as news spread, it all went crazy, and more people thronged the shop,” said Sharma, who now helms the 103-year-old store, which sells Indian musical instruments .

Unable to buy the instruments they wanted to because of the rush of fans, The Beatles returned to their hotel, The Oberoi, a few kilometres away. “So, my father arranged a truck and went to the hotel with the instruments. A few friends and hotel staffers helped carry the instruments up to their hotel rooms. They went back home with a tabla, a sarod, a tanpura and a sitar,” said Sharma, still beaming with pride.

The visit came a year after the release of Norwegian Wood, which features a Sitar, but before Harrison started studying the sitar under Ravi Shankar, and before The Beatles’ dalliance with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi -- they spent time at his ashram in Rishikesh, writing at least 30 songs.

Now and Then

Next to a sitar and a tanpura inside the shop are framed photographs of Harrison playing a sitar next to Dass, and another of McCartney and Dass talking. In an album at the back of the store is another photo of McCartney, Lennon and Harrison watching Dass play the sitar.

While the store catapulted to fame when The Beatles visited in 1966, its story goes back to the early ’20s.

In 1920, Rikhi Ram, a young musician, set up a workshop to make musical instruments in Lahore – one that quickly earned a name in music circles. But Partition changed everything. Along with his family, Ram moved to Delhi in 1947, with only his craft to bank upon.

Ajay Rikhiram shows the pictures of The Beatles inside his store. (Photo by Sanchit Khanna/ Hindustan Times)

Allotted a piece of land in Connaught Place post-Partition, Ram started from scratch, and set up his workshop again -- from Rikhi Ram & Sons, Anarkali Bazaar, Lahore, it became Rikhi Ram & Sons, Connaught Place, Delhi.

In 1961, Ram’s son, Bishan Dass, a sitarist and a disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar, inherited the store. Sharma describes his father as a genius, citing his expertise with instruments, such as the creation of a sitar with a built-in pick-up. “

The CP shop, popular among musicians, truly gained momentum in 1966 when The Beatles paid a visit. Actor Peter Sellers had come calling months before them.

“My father told me that Peter Sellers ordered a sitar for a movie in which he went on to play an Indian man,” said Sharma. His reference is to Blake Edwards’s cult classic The Party; Sellers too, was friend of Ravi Shankar and is believed to have taken some tips from the maestro on playing the sitar in the movie.

In his memoir, I, Me, Mine, Harrison spoke about how he first came across a sitar on the sets of Help!. He first met Ravi Shankar in 1965 .

In July 1966, Harrison was enamoured by a “grand” sitar Dass was polishing in the “Pandit Ravi Shankar style.”

Sharma said, “This sitar uses cedar wood brought in from the Himalayas. The wood is seasoned for seven-eight years before one carves out a sitar from it. After that, the bridges, nuts, frets are added, and the inlay work is done.”

“It was the most expensive sitar in the store. It would have cost ₹700 to ₹1,000 at the time,” recalled Sharma.

In 1999, Sharma met Harrison in London at Pandit Shankar’s concert, where the latter gifted him his autobiography, which is peppered with tales of Harrison’s multiple trips to India. A photograph of the two is pasted on a wall inside the shop.

Sharma said, “He told me that he remembered my father’s smiling face, and then recounted the entire episode... He also said that the sitar he bought from our shop was his favourite. My father used to say that between 1966 and 1974, that is after The Beatles visited, even broken sitars in the shop sold like hot cakes. I remember when I was a child, a hippie came to the shop, asked if The Beatles had come here, and then start kissing the floors. My father always said that The Beatles were a lucky charm.”

On November 2, Now and Then – touted as the last song by The Beatles – released after 45 years, thanks to some AI tinkering. While Sharma hasn’t heard the song yet, his son Akhil, who now works him, has. “Over the years, my father and I have shared the same favourites such as Hey Jude, and Norwegian Wood. And I recently heard Now and Then... So many memories came rushing back to me.”