There is a direct correlation between the name of Serendipity Arts Festival (SAF) and the way the event is structured. Imagine you’re visiting Panjim, where it’s annually held. The Goan capital is off the beaten touristy track. You only have a short while to spend there. So you take a walk to explore the city and find a placard on the roadside inviting you into a disused public space, where an arts show has been curated for public consumption. It can be anything from paintings to installations to a piece of theatre. But the point is, it’s serendipity that’s taken you there — you chanced upon the art.

That sort of happenstance isn’t possible right now, of course. And the organisers have thus jumped on the digital bandwagon, offering a list of shows online. The decision came comparatively late in the day, around April 10, says festival director Smriti Rajgarhia. But she adds that it was because the team wanted to wrap their heads around the digital medium more, before taking the leap. “We were still trying to address what we want to put out online because it might be that we find something exciting on screen, but the audience doesn’t, and we had to be sensitive to that. There was actually a different festival we had planned in Delhi in March. That had to be cancelled when we started getting news about the virus. But subsequently, we have been trying to understand what it [SAF] could become on a digital platform,” Rajgarhia tells us.