For one night in Chennai, the decade-long series of arts festivals quietly moved into a hotel ballroom. There were no banners, no festival frenzy, just art-excited crowds wandering through a Chennai park, curious to know why Goa’s biggest annual multidisciplinary arts gathering, the Serendipity Arts Festival, had decided to stop by.
The answer gradually emerged. It began with a performance by the musical collective Uru Panar, whose music doesn’t so much ease you as it ground you. Their voices rose above the roar of the room, which featured ancient Tamil musical instruments like the yazh, urumi, pepa and sangu, which are rarely heard outside niche archives. This set the tone for an evening that was not a preview in the traditional sense, but an argument for why the tenth edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival wanted to meet the audience where they are before bringing them to Goa.
Setting the tone for the evening’s conversation, Sunil Kant Munjal, founder-patron of Serendipity Arts, said, “Art is not something you seek. It must seek you.” He was not making any grand announcement but was laying out the philosophy that has shaped the tenth edition of the festival.
Ranveer Shah, Sunil Kant Munjal, Priya Paul and Narayan Laxman. Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
The Chennai event, he said, is part of a deliberate effort to take the festival beyond the shores of Goa, creating engagement in cities where audiences may have never experienced its scale or philosophy first-hand. “If we want art to belong to everyone, we can’t sit back and expect people to come 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 art in their own environments, they begin to see why it matters, and that’s when real engagement begins.”
If Uru Panar’s set set the room on memory and identity, the panel discussion – Collaborate, Connect and Make an Impact: The Indian Way of Giving – shifted the evening towards the broader ecosystem that makes such work possible.
Moderated by journalist and artist Narayan Laxman, the discussion began with a reminder of how deeply the traditions of wealth, service and community are woven into the cultural fabric of India. Linking the band’s final song on Kattumaaram to themes of climate, livelihoods and collective responsibility, he defined art as a “powerful medium for empathy, awareness and collective purpose”.
Panel Discussion | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
The panel included Sunil Kant Munjal, businesswoman Priya Paul, and activist and businessman Ranveer Shah, each offering a different perspective on how India’s culture of giving intersects with art. Ranveer made a simple claim: “India has always had a history of giving. More and more, it has evolved with corporate social responsibility. A lot of companies are doing it because they are required to do it, but many people have truly supported the arts even before those laws were put in place, just because they believed in it.”
Priya supported this, saying that a lot of philanthropy is personal. “This 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 clear that art flourishes when people come, listen and are curious, and the tenth edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival is betting on exactly that. With over 35 curators, artists from over 25 countries and programs spanning 10 days across Goa’s public spaces from footpaths and ghats to boats at sunset, the scale is unlike anything the Festival has attempted before.
As Sunil said earlier in the evening, the hope is simple: more people will step away from the screen and into the experience.
The tenth edition of Serendipity Arts Festival will be held from 12th to 21st December in Panaji, Goa. To register, log on to serendipityartsfestival.com.
published – November 18, 2025 03:31 PM IST