We Thought It Would Cost a Few Lakhs

My sister knows me better than anyone. She has watched Aavya from the very beginning, and over the years I have asked her for money more than once. This time, for the record, I did not ask her. But that is beside the point. The point is that when I told her, this past spring, that things were looking good and we were going to build a small pool, she said "oh, sure," in the precise tone of a person who has seen this particular film several times and knows exactly how it ends. She was, as she almost always is, right.

There is a thing about Aavya that explains all of this, so let me say it plainly. The moment one thing is finished, there is always the absolute necessity of the next thing, not because we are restless, but because the next thing simply seems to need doing. It is what we do. It started with the rooms. Then the pottery studio. Then the dorm, the open-air yoga studio, each of the things that have made this place what it is. Each one a dream, and each one built, and the business, if I am being honest, has never quite managed to keep pace with the dreaming. This is the engine of everything good that has happened here, and also the source of every difficult night.

So, this spring. The winter was behind us, we had made a little money, and the genuinely sensible move was right there for the taking: pay down some expensive debt, ease the cash flow, breathe for a season. And in exactly that moment, the idea arrived, and it was, I promise, a modest and sensible one. Let's be clever. Let's build a small cool soaking pool over March and April, so that when the May and June heat comes, Aavya stays beautiful and cool and worth coming to. A small pool. To bring in summer business. Nothing more than that, and no promises to anyone.

You already know what happened, because you understand by now how this place works.

Five Words I Have Learned To Be Afraid Of

Wasn't it obvious there should be an ice bath beside the cool pool? Obviously. And once there was an ice bath, wasn't it obvious there had to be a sauna, since an ice bath without a sauna is just cold water with ideas above its station? Obviously. And then we started reading, and the reading kept insisting: this is a circuit, it works as a whole, you cannot do one part well without the others. And if you are going to do it at all, you may as well do it properly.

Let's just do this right. Five words. I have learned to be afraid of them. They may be the most expensive sentence in the language.

The few lakhs became, quietly and then all at once, very much more than a few lakhs. One month became two became three. We have postponed the opening three times now, each time sincerely, each time wrongly. And we named it TAPAS, the heat of transformation, the fire that burns away what is not essential, without understanding, at the time, that we were not naming the circuit. We were naming what the building of it would do to us.

Because somewhere in the middle, it stopped being a story about a pool. The bank balance reached zero, the real zero, not the figure of speech. One of seven rooms occupied. The café closed to promotion for want of staff. Everything pointed at the build, because the build had become the thing, and the thing would not let go.

The Day A Carpenter Brought Me A Loan

There was a day, about two weeks ago. One of our carpenters, a man who has been with us since the start of this project, took a loan in his own name and brought me the money. Not his savings. A loan, in his name, for a project that was not his, because he believed it deserved to be finished. I took it, and I sat down, and for the first time in the whole life of this place, my eyes were red and I genuinely did not know whether I could carry on. There were other things the money was needed for. There were people I owed. I sat there and asked myself, seriously, whether I should stop.

I did not stop. I cannot fully explain why, except that a man had just borrowed money in his own name to put in my hands, and the only honest answer to a thing like that is to finish it, and to finish it well.

We named it after the fire of transformation without understanding that the fire would be us. The sauna was always going to be ready. It was me who needed building.

The Comic Timing Of It All

And here is the part that I find genuinely funny, in the way that only true things are funny. The cool pool was built to bring people to Aavya during the summer. We are now at the end of the summer. The rains are nearly here. The pool built for the heat is going to open into the monsoon.

So perhaps we will simply be a rain place instead. Perhaps the sauna in the monsoon, the steam meeting the wet forest air, the soak pool dimpled with falling rain, the green of Tapovan at its most alive, perhaps that was the point all along and we just did not know it yet. Or perhaps that is precisely the kind of thing I always say. The optimist's reflex. The famous last words that started this entire expensive adventure in the first place. I honestly cannot tell anymore. Both have turned out to be true before.

Nearly Done. And Here Anyway.

What I know is this: it is nearly done. It is more beautiful than the thing we drew in March. The team has become something I did not expect. There is still no financial closure, there is still not enough money in the bank to finish it cleanly, and yet, somehow, we have got this far. That, more than anything, is the Aavya way: not quite enough, and here anyway.

It will open, when it is ready, which is now genuinely soon. Come and sit in the heat, then the cold, then the still water in the forest above the Ganga, in whatever season finds you here. I will be the one who looks like he has been through it.

Because I have.