Sometimes, we arrive at a moment without planning to.

A few days ago, I was at the Gurukul at the Art of Living International Center in Bengaluru. It was evening, around seven, when I heard chanting drifting from the Ganpati Mandap.

I walked towards it.

The puja was already nearing its end. I didn’t know exactly which ceremony was taking place, and I didn’t get the chance to ask. But standing there, watching it unfold, felt like enough.

At the centre was Ganesha, with Krishna above Him, and Vishnu and Lakshmi beside Him. Other deities sat around them. The priest performed the rituals while the Gurukul children sat close by, participating and assisting.

The chanting continued. A shankh sounded, low and a little uneven, the kind of sound that seems to come from somewhere older than the person blowing it. Sacred instruments accompanied the ceremony, and the children’s voices filled the small mandap, ringed by tall trees and the quiet beauty of the Gurukul.

There was a gentle evening breeze. The sky was still blue. And for those few minutes, everything seemed to come together in a simple, beautiful way.

I stood there watching, listening, taking it all in. Then I reached for my camera.

As someone who loves to capture moments, I instinctively began photographing what was in front of me, the deities, the children, the rituals in motion, the small details that made the evening feel so alive. Half the frames came out blurred, the light was fading fast, and the fire kept moving. I didn’t mind. Some of the blurred ones felt more honest than the sharp ones.

Soon, another part of the ceremony began. The deity was placed in a palki and carried on the shoulders of four boys. The procession moved through the Gurukul, accompanied by fire and chanting. Watching the palki weave through the trees, with evening slowly settling around it, was something I hadn’t quite experienced before.

I was there for perhaps five to eight minutes. Not long at all. Yet I left with a feeling that stayed.

I don’t want to pretend I know every detail of the ritual, or explain something I only witnessed for a few moments. What I can share is what I saw, what I heard, and what I felt.

There was devotion in the chanting, and an innocence in how carefully the children carried out their small parts of it. Underneath both, there was a quiet energy in the whole space — the kind that’s hard to put into words, and maybe wasn’t meant to be explained, only stood inside of for a few minutes.

Perhaps that’s why I wanted to hold on to it through photographs and video, even the imperfect ones. Because sometimes a photograph doesn’t need to be sharp to hold a feeling. Sometimes a few seconds of sound can carry you back to a place. And sometimes, a moment doesn’t need to be understood completely to be deeply felt.

I arrived when the puja was almost over. I stayed for only a few minutes. But perhaps those were the minutes I was meant to experience.
Some moments are not planned. They simply find us.