Fragments of My Childhood Now Live Inside Vedic Village
BY SHIVAANI SHASHI
DIRECTOR, VEDIC VILLAGE RETREAT
Before I understood hospitality, I understood gathering.
I understood what it meant for a house to feel full. We grew up in houses full of people. Every summer, cousins arriving from different parts of the country. Dining tables expanding. Mattresses spread across floors. Noise travelling from one room to another from morning until well past midnight.
There was always movement. Always conversation. Always somebody looking for someone else.
Late at night, after the adults had gone to sleep, all of us would gather in front of the television watching thriller films and cable reruns we had already seen one too many times before. One of the older cousins would sit cross-legged on the floor cutting mangoes into steel bowls while the rest of us stole pieces before they even reached the table.
At some point during those years, one of my cousins invented a card game called Dirty Seven, our completely chaotic family version of Uno. To this day, I have still not met another person who knows this game, which makes me fairly certain we were making up the rules as we went. Nobody played casually.
Arguments became dramatic. Alliances shifted every ten minutes. Somebody always threatened to quit halfway through.
And then everybody returned the next evening to play again.
An ordinary family gathering captured on VHS.
My father, Shashi Kumar, always believed deeply in keeping family close. No matter how busy life became, he made sure people continued gathering. Thirty people sometimes. Forty on other occasions. One home overflowing with food, conversation, children, luggage, and complete chaos.
Looking back now, I think he understood something. Closeness is built over years through repeated time together. Through shared meals. Familiar jokes. Long conversations. Children growing up alongside one another.
The older I get, the more I realise those gatherings quietly shaped my understanding of hospitality as warmth. Familiarity. Ease.
The feeling of walking into a place and immediately feeling welcomed.
That feeling sits at the heart of Vedic Village.
Because long before it became a hospitality brand, it existed as an emotional memory.
A longing for spaces where people could gather naturally again.
Where meals stretch longer than expected because conversation continues. Where children disappear outdoors for hours at a time. Where evenings are spent around tables instead of rushing back to separate rooms. Where nature is not treated as decoration, but simply part of everyday life.
Across our spaces in Alleppey, Kodungallur, and Sriperumbudur, that philosophy continues quietly.
You see it in families sitting together long after meals are over. In grandparents walking slowly while children run ahead. In friends gathering outdoors late into the evening because nobody feels ready to end the conversation yet.
Ever since I stepped into this role at Vedic Village, I realise we are not simply building places for people to stay. We are preserving a way of being together that shaped our childhoods.
The comfort of shared space.
The joy of being expected at a dining table.
The sound of many voices under one roof.
The feeling of belonging.
In a world that offers endless ways to stay connected, many people are still longing for something simpler: the feeling of being fully present with one another.
Perhaps that is what Vedic Village has always been about.
