The Inspiration Behind SurSangat

Music is my kind of meditation

For me, music has never been just something playing in the background. It has a way of becoming the whole moment.

Whether I am listening, singing, or joining in however I can, music takes me somewhere quieter inside. It is my meditation—a deeply absorbed, almost trance-like feeling in which everyday thoughts soften, the clock becomes less convincing, and being present feels effortless.

And when that music is a bhajan, shared with people close to your heart, the experience becomes even more special. There is devotion in the words, warmth in the familiar voices, and joy in simply being together.

You do not need a perfect voice to belong in that moment. Sometimes, all it takes is a willing heart and the confidence to join the chorus.

Knowing the words helps too. More on that shortly.

The evening we didn’t want to end

The idea for SurSangat began with a bhajan sandhya at our home in Mason, Ohio.

We had invited very close friends who share our love for music. We gathered, began singing, and soon found ourselves in that wonderful place where one bhajan leads naturally to another.

A song brings another song to mind. Someone remembers a favorite. Another person is ready with the next one. And somehow, “just one more” begins to sound less like a number and more like a perfectly reasonable plan for the rest of the evening.

We lost track of time.

We still wanted to keep going, but we had dinner planned, so eventually, we had to stop. The music had carried us somewhere beyond the clock. Dinner, quite understandably, was still following the schedule.

It was a beautiful evening—the kind that makes you grateful for your friends and eager to bring everyone together again.

It also left me thinking.

“Did everyone get a turn?”

Looking back, I realized that some friends had sung several bhajans, while others had not yet had a chance.

There was no grand mystery behind it. When people are enjoying themselves, the next song often begins before anyone thinks to ask who is waiting. Enthusiasm has excellent timing when it comes to starting a bhajan, and slightly less interest in managing a queue.

But I wanted everyone to have their moment.

The friend who is ready to sing immediately. The one who needs a little encouragement. The person quietly waiting with a favorite bhajan in mind.

I began imagining a simple way to see who wanted to sing next, so we could spend less time figuring out whose turn it was and give everyone a fair chance to participate.

A little organization could help us take better care of one another.

Same bhajan. Same lyrics. Ideally, at the same time.

Then there were the lyrics.

Someone would begin singing, and others would try to find the words so they could join in. That sounds simple enough—until you discover that finding the bhajan and finding the version being sung are two different achievements.

A familiar title might lead to different verses, a different order, or words that do not quite match what everyone is hearing.

It is hard to lose yourself in the music when you are also trying to win a small race against a search engine.

I wanted us to have a shared place for the lyrics of the version we were singing. Something everyone could follow without spending the first verse searching and the second verse wondering whether they had opened the right result.

More voices joining in. More eyes looking up from phones. And a better chance of all of us arriving at the chorus together.

Our photos needed a gathering place too

People took photos, capturing little pieces of the evening.

But afterward, there was no single shared place to bring those pictures together. Different phones held different memories, and seeing the whole evening meant piecing them together.

It felt only fitting that a gathering built around togetherness should have a common home for its photos.

Somewhere we could return to the smiles, the faces, and the moments that made us want to do it all again.

After all, the evening belonged to everyone. It would be lovely if the memories were easy for everyone to find too.

“What did we sing last time?”

Before another gathering, I wanted to be able to look back at the previous one and see what we had sung.

Which bhajans had we shared? Who had sung them? What might we enjoy revisiting next time?

Memory is a wonderful thing, but it sometimes remembers how much you enjoyed a song more clearly than the name of the song itself.

I wanted a record that all of us could return to—a small, shared musical history of our time together.

Over time, those records could become something meaningful: familiar favorites, songs introduced by friends, and reminders of evenings that might otherwise blur together.

A list of bhajans may look simple on a screen. To the people who were there, it can bring back an entire evening.

And that is where SurSangat began

All these thoughts came from one gathering we had loved.

I began imagining an app that could bring the related parts of a bhajan or musical jamming session into one place: inviting friends, organizing singing turns, sharing the right lyrics, collecting photos, and keeping a record of the songs we had enjoyed together.

The idea was to make those practical details easier, so our attention could stay with the people and the music.

Because when a gathering flows well, everyone feels it. A friend gets their turn. Others can sing along. The photos are easy to find afterward. And the next gathering begins with a little connection to the one before it.

That is the spirit behind SurSangat.

It grew out of my love for music, my gratitude for the friends we share it with, and my wish to help more of those beautiful moments happen.

A little less searching. A little more singing.

My hope is that SurSangat helps us be more present with one another.

That it makes room for the quieter singer, helps a room full of friends follow the same words, and gives our shared memories a place to live.

Most of all, I hope it supports that wonderful feeling of being so involved in the music that, for a while, nothing else needs your attention.

If it helps us sing a little more, include one another a little better, and carry those evenings with us a little longer, it will be doing something close to my heart.

And if we still lose track of time?

Well, some parts of a good bhajan sandhya may not need fixing.

We may simply need to plan dinner a little later.

With music and gratitude, Anil Sharma Mason, Ohio