On a recent trip to London I made a new friend. At 23, Z is a lot younger than me, which means I have much to learn from her. Before coming to London to study she lived in several countries – Pakistan, Afghanistan and India – and to talk to her is to travel borders, taste cultures and generally have your world enhanced.

A mutual friend put us in touch, and we arranged to meet in a cafe in Notting Hill. This cafe was so hipster it didn’t serve oat milk and the owner looked at my teenage daughters witheringly when they asked. This may be the future of hipster coffee joints. No choice instead of endless choice. We can only dream.

Z’s background is fascinating and infuriating. Her family has experienced exile and authoritarianism alongside a deep love of country and rich cultural influences. She speaks like someone much older and has a grasp of geopolitics that would put many of us to shame.

She moved to London on a student visa from Delhi. We talked about India and I told her I’d spent some time there, years ago. She wanted to know where I’d been. I recalled trips to Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, Lucknow and Mumbai, and then I tried to remember the name of a place in the north where I’d spent a couple of happy weeks meditating and watching monkeys harass people crossing a picturesque bridge across the Ganges.

It annoyed me that I couldn’t remember. “You know the place,” I told her. “It’s where The Beatles went with their guru, the Maharishi, when they discovered Transcendental Meditation.”

Z looked at me blankly. Which at first I thought was understandable. A 23-year-old might not know about the Maharishi or Transcendental Meditation. They might not be aware that The Beatles followed him over to India, eventually becoming disillusioned with their bearded guru while writing nearly 50 songs by the sacred river in – ah, I remember now, Rishikesh! – including classics such as Dear Prudence and Julia. I tried to explain this part of Beatles lore. But it wasn’t the Maharishi part Z was struggling with. “What is The Beatles?” she asked, a quizzical look in her intelligent eyes.

What is The Beatles? The question arrived like a whack on the head from Maxwell’s Silver Hammer. Bear in mind, Z was asking this of somebody who has a WhatsApp group called Get Back, which exists solely for Beatles discourse and to plan trips based around The Beatles. The three of us members have had Beatles-themed excursions in Liverpool and London and are planning one to Hamburg. “What is The Beatles?” ‘What is the stars, Joxer?’ I thought. ‘What is the stars?’

At first I imagined I heard Z wrong. I got my phone out. I showed her photos of the band grinning in all their mop-top glory. “Look, you know, The Beatles? John and Paul,” I said. “Ringo and George.” Z shook her head. She had no knowledge of these people. “Lennon? McCartney?” I tried. Nothing.

Suddenly I was in the middle of Yesterday, a film written by Richard Curtis, which posits the notion of a universe where The Beatles have never existed. A man has an accident on his bike in the middle of an electrical storm and emerges from it only to encounter a world untouched by Help! or Hey Jude or A Hard Day’s Night or All You Need Is Love. He’s the only person on earth who knows about the band or who has heard their music. It was a fab idea for a film. Imagine, there’s no Beatles. It’s not easy even if you try.

[ I’m missing some teeth but I can’t stop laughing or grinningOpens in new window ]

I had a sort of out-of-body experience during this moment with Z in a hipster coffee joint where my daughters were having to imagine a world without oat milk.

And I thought of Z at my sister Rachael’s birthday party in her sun-drenched garden last week. There was a 1960s theme and I was the DJ – by which I mean I had my phone and a music app and a Bluetooth speaker. Even apart from The Beatles, when you are DJing a party using music from the decade with very few duds, you realise most 1960s tunes are bangers. I’m looking forward to experiencing a momentous cultural exchange with Z over the next while, where she educates me further about the Taliban and I watch her fall in love with The Beatles.

For starters, I was tasked with choosing which Beatles song she should listen to first. What a task. I consulted my Get Backers. As I watched my lovely sister do the twist in her charity shop flower-power dress, we decided Z’s introduction to The Beatles would start with a sublime tune, a song so good that, as writer Damien Owens once pointed out, it’s astonishing when you consider it was written by only the band’s third-best songwriter. It’s also a song that feels apt as we welcome in the new month of May. Play it loud. Play it as though, like Z, you’re hearing it for the very first time: Here Comes The Sun. Here it comes.