Let’s start with the truth. If you’re looking for silence, zero distractions, noise-cancelling everything, and eight straight hours of laser-focused productivity every single day, this may not be the perfect work-from-home place for you. Because when you work from Aavya, the day doesn’t always behave the way your calendar wants it to.
You sit down to work, fully intending to be disciplined, and then something interrupts you. A pottery wheel starts spinning nearby. Someone casually asks if you want chai. Music drifts in from a movement class. Sunlight hits your laptop screen in that irritatingly beautiful way that makes it impossible to ignore the world around you. You sigh, adjust your screen, and open your laptop anyway.
Work still happens. Google Meets still happen. Deadlines still exist. You still need to show up and deliver. But the day doesn’t stay obedient. It moves. It interrupts. It pulls at you gently instead of aggressively.
The city trains us to feel busy. Busy becomes a kind of identity. If you’re tired, you must be important. If your calendar is full, you must be doing something right. Here, that constant sense of busyness doesn’t carry the same weight. It just feels loud. Out of place. The distractions aren’t stressful or demanding — they’re inviting. They ask you to soften, not shut down.
You could ignore them and stay glued to your screen. Many people try. But your body starts sending small messages anyway. Maybe you should stand up for a minute. Maybe you should take a breath. Maybe you don’t need to push quite so hard this week. And if you’re honest, maybe that’s exactly what you needed to hear.
Some days, work slips a little. You plan to work all afternoon, and somehow you end up in the pottery studio instead — hands in clay, mind strangely quiet. Or you wander into an art space. Or you join a dance class where someone casually says, “Just shake that leg,” and you find yourself laughing at how seriously you’ve been taking everything. This isn’t productivity theatre. It’s your nervous system finally getting a chance to exhale.
Pottery grounds you in your hands and breath. Movement releases tension you didn’t know you were carrying. Dance does things no to-do list has ever managed to fix. And the surprising part is that none of this actually ruins your work.
In fact, here’s the funny thing. When your system calms down, work often becomes easier. If you’re even slightly good with AI and focused work blocks, you’ll quietly finish in two solid hours what used to drag on for four. No one needs to know. You catch up later in the evening if needed. Sometimes you even pretend you’re still busy, just to stay familiar with your old habits.
So what is this place, really? A workcation? A retreat? A distraction? Not exactly. It’s more like working while being human again. Afternoons stretch instead of collapsing. Breakfast depends on mood — dosa, cheela, sometimes bedmi puri, because honestly, why not. Evenings don’t follow a strict plan.
Some nights you go for Ganga Aarti. Some nights there’s kirtan somewhere in town. Some nights it’s an open mic, a bonfire, or people lying on mats talking absolute nonsense. You sleep better. You breathe deeper. At some point, you realise you’ve stopped clenching your jaw — usually because someone points it out before you notice yourself.
Then there’s the part no one warns you about. You meet people who came “for a few days.” From cities. From different countries. Still working, still building things — just at a different pace. They didn’t plan to stay. They didn’t announce anything. They just… didn’t leave.
Ashish Khandelwal, the founder, arrived the same way. What began as a visit slowly turned into a home. No dramatic decision. No grand plan. Just time doing what time does best.
So no — Aavya isn’t the perfect work-from-home place. There are distractions. There’s life happening around you. There’s laughter, movement, conversation, and the occasional feeling that work can wait an hour. But maybe that’s not a flaw.
Maybe that’s your body telling you something. Maybe this month doesn’t need to be about pushing harder. Maybe it’s okay to work a little softer, learn something new, meet people you wouldn’t have otherwise, and enjoy yourself along the way.
You can always book your return ticket later.