If
you were to place odds on the chances of a kid in Doon School buying art – yes
buying art – with his pocket money, in instalments, it would probably be at
500:1. But if you did bet on it, the art buying spree of a certain Sunil Kant
Munjal, student of Doon School, would have made you pots of money.
Well,
money or net worth has never been something to worry about, for this scion of
the Munjal family and the son of patriarch Brij Mohan Lal Munjal, the creator
of the iconic Hero group. Sunil, the youngest, who separated from his brothers
to set up Hero Enterprise, is a bit of a betting ban. He bets on ideas. And one
of his best ideas germinated when it was just a continuous experience at home.
Art all over the house, music, a stream of music concerts and most importantly,
almost all the greats of Indian classical music – Ravi Shankar, Allah Rakha,
Sahir Ludhianvi, Mahendra Kapoor and the rest, as regulars at home. Art, music
and theatre came together as a seamless whole and not in silos.
Many
years later, after nurturing many businesses and social enterprises, Sunil
Munjal wanted the best of art in all its forms to be showcased as a continuous
festival. And that is when the Serendipity Arts Festival was conceived. This
was not an end in itself, as Sunil Munjal told Café in his hotel overlooking
the massive expanse of the Arabian Ocean, before heading off to the Serendipity
Arts Festival in Panjim, his creation: “India has been the home for the arts and
that includes everything from music to paintings to sculpture, dance, poetry,
textiles, food and crafts. And this has been recognised all over the world. But
all art forms are interconnected and this is the way India sees it.”
When
Munjal conceived this, it was in the context of creating a movement to
encourage art in this form in India’s educational institutions as well as
continuously promote latent talent.
Asked
why his team picked Goa to be the home of Serendipity (now in its second year),
Munjal said, “ If we had it in Delhi and Bombay, people would have come with
other things to do and this would be one of the things they would do. In Goa,
people travel for the festival and this becomes all important. In addition,
there are enough five star and other hotels and multiple flight connections.”
He
has an interesting tale to tell about the first edition of Serendipity. Since
the team did not go overboard in publicising it, people actually did not
believe that a world class festival would actually be free to watch and
experience. It was only on the last couple of days that the reality dawned.
This
year, the scale is tremendous, with over 70-odd performances, 1,000 artistes
including 100 from overseas, performance arts on a barge on the Mandovi and
myriad interactive performances making this into a world festival, spinning off
in its wake so many peripheral activity like other art festivals and shows like
the Goa Affordable Arts Festival at the MOG gallery.
And
above all, the art collector of Doon School is proud of the inclusive nature of
Serendipity with wheelchair access for the physically challenged, sign language
experts for hearing challenged and catalogues in Braille for the visually
impaired. And Goa is proud because truly, this has become our festival.
