The Music of Serendipity

A Moment in Varanasi

In 2014, on the steps beside the Ganges in Varanasi, I came upon a group of boys playing badminton.

There was nothing particularly unusual about the game. Children play wherever they find room, and the steps leading down to the river offered a place for an afternoon’s recreation.

But there was something extraordinary about the setting.

Behind the players rose an enormous painted image of Ganesha, one of Hinduism’s most familiar and beloved deities. Against this vivid backdrop, a young boy reached upward to strike the shuttlecock.

I raised my camera.

The photograph captured something I have always found compelling about Varanasi: the ease with which the sacred and the everyday inhabit the same space.

The boys were not performing for visitors. They were simply enjoying their game, apparently unconcerned with the magnificent figure watching over them.

I did not know the boy’s name. I had no reason to imagine I would ever learn it.

For more than a decade, the photograph remained part of my collection of images from India.

A Photograph in Search of Music

In 2026, while developing the Everyday Lives Documentary Archive, I began exploring ways of bringing music into the experience of viewing selected photographs.

My intention was not to create a soundtrack that would overwhelm the images or tell viewers what to feel. I wanted something quieter and more personal: original music, rooted in the musical traditions of the places where the photographs had been made, that might invite viewers to linger a little longer.

The photograph of the badminton player seemed an especially intriguing place to begin.

There was an appealing contrast between the movement of the young boy, the commanding presence of Ganesha, and the possibility of a musical interpretation drawn from the Hindustani classical tradition.

But where would I find someone in Varanasi willing to compose an original piece for a single photograph taken twelve years earlier?

The search led me to Ravi Tripathi, a musician, composer and music producer associated with the Baba School of Music in Varanasi.

And that was when the coincidences began to emerge.

A School I Had Already Photographed

While revisiting my photographs from a subsequent journey to India in 2019, I discovered something that gave this new collaboration a surprising personal dimension.

Among those photographs was an image featuring the Baba School of Music.

I had photographed the school years before I had any reason to contact Ravi.

At the time, it was simply another small observation from the streets of Varanasi. I could not have known that, years later, the same school would become connected to an entirely different photograph in my archive.

Two photographs, taken five years apart, were beginning to find their way into the same story.

One showed a boy playing badminton beneath Ganesha. The other recorded a place where music was being taught and nurtured.

And now, through Ravi, the two were unexpectedly connected.

From Photograph to Composition

Ravi responded warmly to the idea of creating original music for the badminton photograph.

Our exchanges developed into a collaboration that I found particularly rewarding. We discussed the photograph, the musical atmosphere it might suggest, and the instruments that could bring the composition to life.

Ravi devoted considerable thought and time to the project.

He shared preliminary recordings, and we exchanged impressions about the musical direction. What appealed to me was the expressive quality of the instruments and their capacity to establish a mood without overwhelming the photograph.

I was reminded, in one of our discussions, of the musical atmosphere of Within You Without You, George Harrison’s composition on the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The comparison was not about imitating the song, but about the evocative possibilities of Indian classical instruments and their distinctive musical voices.

The composition gradually took shape.

At Mahadev Studio in Varanasi, Ravi brought together musicians performing sarangi, santoor and tabla.

The sarangi and santoor brought their distinctive musical voices to the arrangement. Ravi also played tabla, in addition to composing and producing the music.

Ravi generously shared videos from the recording sessions, giving me a glimpse of the musicians at work.

Sound engineer Amit Rawat worked on the recording, helping bring the individual performances into the finished composition.

These glimpses offered something I had not anticipated when I first suggested commissioning music: an opportunity to see the people and the creative work behind the sounds.

The musicians, the engineer, the studio and the instruments had become another documentary subject in their own right.

The Remarkable Discovery

And then Ravi told me something I could scarcely believe.

The boy I had photographed playing badminton in Varanasi in 2014 was a student of his at the Baba School of Music.

His name was Ashesh Mishra.

I was astonished. Twelve years earlier, I had photographed Ashesh without knowing his name, never imagining that our paths might cross again.

When I learned that Ashesh was also a tabla player, I suggested to Ravi that perhaps he could participate in the composition, if Ravi felt it would be musically appropriate.

Ravi agreed, and Ashesh became one of the musicians contributing to the recording.

There was something wonderfully satisfying about this development. The boy whose spontaneous game had inspired the photograph would now help create the music inspired by that very image.

The coincidence had brought us together. The music gave us a reason to collaborate.

The People Behind the Music

The composition is the work of several musicians and a recording engineer, each bringing a different contribution to the finished piece.

• Ravi Tripathi — Composer, Music Producer and Tabla
• Ashesh Mishra — Tabla; the boy photographed playing badminton in 2014
• Anish Mishra — Sarangi
• Kumar Sarang Choudhary — Santoor
• Amit Rawat — Sound Engineer

Recorded at Mahadev Studio, Varanasi, India.

Although Ashesh and Anish share the surname Mishra, they are not related.

Their collaboration reflects the musical creativity that continues to flourish in Varanasi, a city whose traditions have inspired generations of musicians.

The Music of Serendipity

There is a word for the unexpected discovery of something meaningful that we were never consciously seeking.

Serendipity.

It seems particularly appropriate here.

One photograph, taken in 2014, led to a search for music twelve years later.

That search led to Ravi, whose school I had unknowingly photographed on another visit to Varanasi.

And the resulting composition brought the young boy from the original photograph back into the story—not as a subject remembered from the past, but as a musician participating in its creation.

There is something wonderfully circular about it all.

The photograph has not changed. The boy is still suspended in that fleeting instant, his badminton racket raised against the great painted figure of Ganesha.

But the story surrounding the image has changed in ways I could never have foreseen.

Perhaps this is one of the quiet gifts of documentary photography.

We may know what we have photographed, but we cannot always know where a photograph will eventually take us.

And sometimes, if we are fortunate, a photograph finds its own music.