Serendipity Arts Festival completes ten years. And I still remember that very first edition vividly. I spent the week rushing from one venue to another, photographing installations, filming performances, attending workshops and sending everything to friends and family, exclaiming: “I can’t believe it! Can you believe this is happening in Goa?”
They could have easily held it in Mumbai or Delhi and gained more media coverage, more prestige. But here it was in our own backyard. Each year, I feared they might shift the venue, but here we are, a decade later: Serendipity in Goa.
I often say Serendipity Arts Festival (SAF) is my favourite festival in Goa, and that’s saying something from someone who adores Narakasur night before Diwali, the Christmas season, and Ganesh Chaturthi. Here’s why this festival still feels special.
Serendipity changed my relationship with art
For many of us who grew up in the 1990s, career choices were limited to medicine or engineering. The arts were considered hobbies, not professions. If you painted or wrote well, you were “so talented” but that was where encouragement ended.
I had always wanted to be a journalist, but my success in medical entrance exams set me on a different path. Serendipity, however, rekindled that creative spark.
I still remember sitting cross-legged under sun-dappled trees in the Art Park opposite INOX, surrounded by other adults like me: engineers, doctors, scientists, professors, all lost in painting bottles, dip-dyeing T-shirts, and moulding clay masks. It was nine years ago, and that day I found my tribe: people with scientific minds and artistic hearts.
This wasn’t just a weekend workshop. It was an entire week of immersive experiences, live music, installations, performances, and community. We didn’t just sip art; we drank it deeply. Some childhood regrets healed that day.
Serendipity changed my relationship with money
As a middle-class Indian, I grew up with certain assumptions about wealth and the wealthy, often sceptical ones. When Serendipity first came to Goa, those beliefs cracked open.
“All this is free? And it’s not government-funded?” I remember asking. It was lavish, world-class, beautifully curated, and open to everyone. Someone, I learnt, had simply decided to gift this experience to the public.
As a young doctor, I had viewed money as a tool for survival, something you earned for services rendered. But here was a demonstration of wealth being used for beauty, impact, and legacy.
Mr Munjal’s vision redefined generosity for me. Instead of only addressing roti-kapda-makaan, he nourished the soul. Through art, he gave people – even those with modest means – a chance to experience grace and wonder.
Every year since, I’ve registered my house helps for the festival. I’ve taken them to live shows at Nagalli Hills, art exhibits at the Adil Shah Palace, and workshops at the Art Park. Many had never seen classical dance or theatre before. Over the years, they’ve developed opinions, preferences, and discernment, something survival alone cannot offer. Art gave them a point of view.
Serendipity changed my relationship with Indian artisans
For many of us, the term Indian artisan evoked images of folk singers, Rajasthani dancers, or weavers at Dilli Haat; valuable, yes, but rarely aspirational. Serendipity changed that.
It elevated our artists, placing them on grand stages, amphitheatres, sunset cruises, presented with the dignity and museum-quality lighting their craft deserved.
Last year, my son began collecting autographs from exhibiting artists. Some even created tiny sketches for him in his notebook. Who knows, one of them might be the next M F Husain.
He was seven when he first heard live Carnatic music and saw Kathak at Serendipity in Kala Academy. While we were enamoured by the performance though, he softly snored through most of it! By eight, I took him for his first river raag experience. The gentle rocking of the cruise boat at sunset was too much for him; he slept again through a sitar–tabla sunset cruise. But by nine, he was running to get front-row seats, journalling his impressions after every show. He drew the sitar and tabla performance during the river raag performance, and even for the artists it was so special to be appreciated by a nine-year-old like that.
That’s the quiet legacy of Serendipity; art seeps in, generation by generation.
Serendipity changed my relationship with death
In 2018, at the DB grounds, my three-year-old son was playing amid heaps of marigold petals after a Krishna Leela performance. Usha Uthup was due on stage next. I remember taking out my phone to capture his joy when a message arrived: a close friend’s husband had just died in a road accident. He was in his thirties, like us.
Grief crashed through me. I left the venue with my son, wondering, “What’s the point of it all? Art, celebration, music, when death is inevitable?” That year I did not attend any other events at Serendipity; it seemed pointless and fake.
Years later, at the 2024 festival, Usha Uthup performed again. And amid that celebration came news of tabla maestro Zakir Hussain’s passing. Yet this time, something felt different. At Serendipity, death became a homage to life, a reminder that art is how we transcend mortality. It became a reason why we create, why we perform, and art became a way that we leave back an immortal part of us that we created from the extremely mortal bits of ourselves. Ahh, art is immortality! Or at least art is the little sprinkling of soul that lingers on a little longer after our bodies pass on. And it lives on in the people who witnessed our art, or appreciated our art, or even recreated our art and gave us credit.
The festival itself was born as a tribute, named after Munjal’s late wife, whose store was called Serendipity. It continues to honour her by reminding us that beauty, generosity, and remembrance can live on through art.
Ten years on, Serendipity Arts Festival is more than an event; it is a way of seeing life itself: as an interplay of creation, community, and continuity.
(The author is a paediatric ophthalmologist, author, feminine life coach, wellness advocate and a culinary/travel content creator)
