It was peak tourist season in Goa. On the river Mandovi, fishermen gawked at a sunset cruise gone rogue with classical musicians on board, the strains of flute and tabla coursing gently with the waters. Those aboard, oblivious to the surrounding flotilla of casinos with their LED screens projecting Bollywood dances, drank in the melodies of this “River Raag”. Across, near the riverfront, were the words—oddly reassuring, faintly ominous—“Everything that has ever happened will happen again”. The sign was a part of “Time Repeats”, a public art project at the Serendipity Arts Festival, that ran from December 15 to 23, returning after a two-year-long COVID-19-induced hiatus.
As if to make up for lost time, Serendipity seemed bigger and more diverse this year, and so was its audience. “We wanted to exhibit and showcase work at a certain scale and quality that justifies the wait,” said Smriti Rajgarhia, director, Serendipity Arts Foundation and Festival. She added that the festival programming had to be “re-adapted and re-imagined keeping in mind the changes society at large has gone through”.
“‘Food is no less of an art form, and a deeply personal one at that,’ said Smriti Rajgarhia, Director, Serendipity Arts Foundation and Festival.”
In its fifth edition, the multidisciplinary arts festival was a smorgasbord of events held across venues in and around Panaji’s heritage district: exhibitions, performances, and workshops in the Old GMC complex; music and a market in the Art Park; installations in the Excise building; performances in the massive Arena at Nagalli Hills; an experimental opera in an abandoned “unnamed building”; Indian classical music on a boat; film screenings in Panjim Market; public art and workshops across venues, and more.
Conversations on food
What is Goa without a scrumptious meal? Happily at Serendipity, gastronomy was given its rightful place among the arts. In the “The Food Lab”, members of Goa’s aboriginal Kunbi community, Lorenciana Fernandes (76) and Katerina Carvalho (57), proved that cooking is indeed a performing art as they gave a live demonstration of Kunbi cuisine. The audience of the interactive workshop “Unearthing Tribal cuisines of Goa” sampled native tubers like chirko (Guinea arrowroot) and mundlyo (Colocasia esculenta) as the women, dressed in the traditional chequered Kunbi sari, prepared a kodi (curry) of dried mackerel with mundlyo. A small sampling of the meal was followed by the preparation of ganjan kasai (a jaggery and lemongrass brew) and sweet flatbread called taata bhakri by members of south Goa’s Velip community.
“Naachiyar Next” curated by Geeta Chandran at the theatre, Old GMC Complex. | Photo Credit: Serendipity Arts Festival 2022
Facilitators of this workshop, Sid Mewara of the successful web series The Big Forkers and Dr Tanvi Bambolkar, a specialist in Goa’s folk culture, entertained and informed the audience, with Bambolkar serving as interpreter for the Konkani-speaking Kunbi women. “It’s high time we acknowledged the early settlers of Goa,” said Bambolkar. “Projects like these instill a sense of pride and empowerment among these communities, who were sidelined until recently.”
Theirs was among a slew of culinary workshops ranging from Goan Gaud Saraswat fare and Manipur’s indigenous Meitei cuisine to cheesemaking, craft beer-making, and the art of plating, among others. While “agripreneur” Shailesh Sakharam Awte introduced workshop attendees to a mind-boggling variety of indigenous seeds and rice, Chef Avinash Martins reimagined Goan cuisine by creating global fare with local ingredients.
“Art inspires and agriculture sustains. Connecting art and agriculture (with sustainability as a binder) and encouraging conversations around food was the goal of this year’s curation,” said the curator of the culinary festival, restaurateur-sommelier Prahlad Sukhtankar.
Shubha Mudgal performing for Serendipity Soundscapes curated by Aneesh Pradhan. | Photo Credit: Serendipity Arts Festival 2022
The Food Lab was the culmination of a culinary arts residency programme by the Serendipity Arts Foundation enquiring into alternative sources of nourishment and food practices shaped by historic events. Outside the venue was “The Library of Edible Issues”, a food-systems collective initiated by Elizabeth Yorke and Anusha Murthy involving participatory events and research as well as “The Case of Missing Vegetables” by Akash Muralidharan, the result of a 100-day project of cooking with forgotten vegetables from the Tamil cookbook Samaithu Paar.
“Food is no less of an art form, and a deeply personal one at that,” said Rajgarhia. “It is a recordkeeper and illustrator of human history, its traditions, innovations, struggles, and opulence, which deserves as much recognition as any other art form as it brings people together.”
If the culinary programming came across as rooted in heritage even as it embraced contemporary culture, the theme was echoed across the festival.
Living Projects
In the multilingual storytelling performance “Hunkaro,” the narrator returned to Marwari, the language of his roots, to tell his story as a migrant labourer returning home during the lockdown; “Goa Familia”, an ongoing project that explores Goan family histories through their photographic archives, traced the origins of the popular Goa Carnival; an extensive display of Company School paintings from the Swaraj archive as well as photographs of forgotten carpets of the Jaipur court from a recently recovered archive, were a nod to our colonial heritage even as the festival displayed “post-digital” multi-media art and NFTs. And in the remarkable “Srijan”, an exhibition curated by Anjana Somany, the installations showcased as well as interpreted Indian traditional crafts in modern terms. What stood out in the 2022 edition of Serendipity was the spirit of community (of renewed significance after the isolation of the pandemic) as well as the inclusion of disciplines not usually categorised as art.
“Srijan” curated by Anjana Somany at Azad Maidan. | Photo Credit: Serendipity Arts Festival 2022
In the corner of a riverside park fringed with casuarina trees was an evolving mural that pieced together a banyan tree; its medium was embroidery. Housed in “The Enchanted Grove”, an interactive space created by Goa’s Bookworm Trust and Library where children and adults alike found refuge, “The Banyan Tree project”—initiated by the textile artist Eleanor Viegas and based on a painting by Girish Gujar—invited visitors to participate in the collaborative artwork. It comprised pieces of embroidered cloth, which, individually, depicted an aspect of nature found in the tree; together, they represented the tree in its entirety.
With its live stitching station, community weaving projects, a charming outdoor library, and indigenous storytelling sessions, the grove embodied the spirit of community. Meant to represent the devrai or sacred groves of Goa, it reconnected visitors with nature and their roots.
Known for its extensive work with rural communities and counter-narratives to the mainstream idea of Goa and its culture, Bookworm engaged storytellers from tribal communities—like the folklorist and actor Sobita Kudtarkar and Devidas Gaonkar, a sociologist, journalist, and one of the founders of the Tribal Research Centre. In a previous edition of Serendipity, Bookworm had showcased its ambitious “Nhoi: The Goa River Draw”, a community project that documented the river through drawings and personal histories of riverside communities. This theme continued through storytelling sessions in this year’s edition.
The Enchanted Grove workshop at The Art Park curated by Bookworm. | Photo Credit: Serendipity Arts Festival 2022
“There is an absence of awareness that we’re animistic,” said Sujata Noronha, educator and founder-director, Bookworm. “We look at our colonial and postcolonial history but Goa’s indigenous roots are absent from the discourse even among local people.”
Access for all
At the heart of community lie empathy and inclusion.
In theatre, one saw previously untrained actors from marginalised communities take centre stage in performances like Nava and Pah-lak. Pah-lak, one of the first contemporary performances in the Tibetan language by Tibetan performers, saw them play Chinese characters with compassion. Nava, a performance by nine transgender individuals narrating their true stories, was moving but not without humour.
“I needed a ‘guiding light’, something to peg the entire curation on. To start with, I was only responding to the spaces where these performances would happen. But as we talked, the word ‘community’ kept coming to the fore. Soon my ‘guiding light’ shifted to not just what the performances are but also to who is telling them and why it is important for them to tell it,” said curator Quasar Thakore-Padamsee.
“Term and Conditions Apply”, special project by Aesang Borang at The Foundry, Old GMC Complex. | Photo Credit: Serendipity Arts Festival 2022
Not all stories needed words. “One Hundred and Eleven”, a duet between the ballet dancer Eve Mutso from Estonia and the paraplegic dancer Joel Brown from Scotland, was a poignant narrative of friendship and trust, vulnerability and strength, of accepting and overcoming challenges.
Meanwhile, “Senses” was India’s first “accessible and inclusive outreach programme” for those with special needs. Curated by Siddhant Shah, founder of Access For All, the programme included art and photography workshops for the visually impaired as well as mental and health awareness workshops for those with intellectual disabilities. Shah, a heritage architect and access consultant, is known for providing design-based solutions focussed on inclusion and accessibility in cultural spaces.
Serendipity 2022 succeeded in fostering a sense of togetherness. This was palpable at the Mercado, a community market where local products were sold and indigenous meals served as festival-goers grooved to music belted out by local bands or attended workshops on sustainable practices. It was seen in the wide network of young volunteers who formed the bedrock of the festival and in the free shuttles that took festival-goers to the various venues, inspiring conversations between strangers.
Questions of overtourism and intrusiveness of Instagrammers in residential areas were forgotten briefly as residents and tourists came together to partake of a multi-sensorial feast.
Janhavi Acharekar is an author, a curator, and creative consultant.
The Crux
- The Serendipity Arts Festival ran in Goa from December 15 to 23, returning after a two-year-long COVID-19-induced hiatus
- As if to make up for lost time, Serendipity seemed bigger and more diverse this year, and so was its audience
- In its fifth edition, the multidisciplinary arts festival was a smorgasbord of events held across venues in and around Panaji’s heritage district
- Gastronomy was given its rightful place among the arts
- If the culinary programming came across as rooted in heritage even as it embraced contemporary culture, the theme was echoed across the festival, in installations, workshops and plays
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