For one night in Chennai, the long arc of a decade-old art festival quietly found its way into a hotel ballroom. There were no banners, no festival frenzy, just an art enthused crowd filtering into THE Park Chennai, curious about why Goa’s biggest annual multi-disciplinary arts gathering, the Serendipity Arts Festival, had chosen to make a pitstop here.
The answer unfolded gradually. It began with a performance by musical collective Uru Paanar, whose music does not ease you in so much as root you to the floor. Their vocals rose over the hum of the room, carried by ancient Tamil musical instruments like the yazh, urumi, pepa, and sangu, which are rarely heard outside niche archives. It set the tone for an evening that was not a preview in the traditional sense, but an argument for why the Serendipity Arts Festival’s tenth edition wants to meet audiences where they are, before bringing them to Goa.
“Art isn’t something you go looking for. It should come looking for you,” said founder–patron, Serendipity Arts, Sunil Kant Munjal, setting the framework for the evening’s conversation. He was not making a grand declaration so much as stating a principle that has shaped the festival’s tenth edition.
Ranvir Shah, Sunil Kant Munjal, Priya Paul and Narayan Lakshman
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
The Chennai event, he explained, is part of a deliberate effort to take the festival beyond Goa’s shores, creating pockets of engagement in cities where audiences may never have experienced its scale or philosophy firsthand. “If we want the arts to belong to everyone, we can’t sit back and hope people will find their way to us. It’s our responsibility to take the work to new cities, new audiences, and new conversations. These gatherings aren’t promotions, they’re invitations. When people experience the arts in their own environments, they begin to see why it matters, and that is when real participation begins.”
If Uru Paanar’s set grounded the room in memory and identity, the panel discussion — Collaborate, connect and make impact: The Indian way of giving, — shifted the evening toward the wider ecosystem that makes such work possible.
Moderated by journalist and artist Narayan Lakshman, the discussion opened with a reminder of how deeply the traditions of dhan, seva, and community are woven into India’s cultural fabric. Linking the band’s final song on the kattumaram to themes of climate, livelihood, and collective responsibility, he framed the arts as “powerful vehicles for empathy, awareness, and collective purpose.”
The panel discussion
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
The panel featured Sunil Kant Munjal, businesswoman Priya Paul, and activist and businessman Ranvir Shah, each bringing a different vantage point on how India’s culture of giving intersects with the arts. Ranvir made a simple assertion: “India has always had a history of giving. More and more, that’s grown with corporate social responsibility. A lot of companies are doing it because they’re required to, but many people have supported the arts genuinely, even before those laws came into force, simply because they believed in it.”
This was backed by Priya adding that a lot of philanthropy is private. “It doesn’t mean you have to be rich to enjoy the arts, and so if you create an ecosystem of philanthropy, it is possible to support the arts,” she says.
The event made it apparent that the arts thrive when people show up, listen, and stay curious, and that is precisely what the tenth edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival is betting on. With more than 35 curators, artists from over 25 countries, and 10 days of programmes spread across Goa’s public spaces from pavements and jetties to boats at sunset, the scale is unlike anything the festival has attempted before.
As Sunil put it earlier in the evening, the hope is simple: that more people will step off the screen and into the experience.
The tenth edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival will be hosted in Panjim, Goa from December 12 to 21. To register, log on to serendipityartsfestival.com.
Published – November 18, 2025 03:31 pm IST
