From the outside, landing a plum role in Sam Mendes’s four-film event, The Beatles, seems remarkable. On the inside, it comes with immense hard work. Ask Farhan Akhtar. The actor, who will portray late sitarist Pandit Ravi Shankar, has begun his physical prep for his Hollywood feature debut. But that’s not it — his prep naturally involves learning to play the sitar.

mid-day has exclusively learnt that Akhtar is being trained by acclaimed sitarist and composer Purbayan Chatterjee’s Purbayan Arts and Artists Music Foundation (PAAMF).

Chatterjee remembered his first interaction with Akhtar; it happened without any indication of the film franchise that was driving it.

“My friend Anurag Rao, who is also associated with Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, called me out of the blue and said, ‘Farhan wants to learn [the sitar] from you.’ I asked why he wanted to learn it. At that point, Farhan was bound by an NDA, so [my friend] couldn’t get all the details. [Later] Farhan said, ‘There’s this role that I’m doing.’ So, we met and I gave him some tips,” recalled Chatterjee.

That was just the start. Chatterjee realised that with Akhtar’s busy schedule, it was better if someone guided him whenever he sat down to play. “My student Ruthvik Rao goes regularly to monitor his [progress].” 

Of course, Chatterjee is only a call away. “Sometimes Farhan bhai calls or texts, saying, ‘Can you send me the tuning configuration for the strings? I have forgotten it.’ I respect him, he is artistically inclined.”