Waris Ahluwalia he's one of those characters where the trip it is always present. As an actor, designer, philanthropist, conservationist, herbalist, and founder of the House of Waris. Even as the protagonist of that Condé Nast Traveler cover in which he took us to the Swiss Alps. He is also one of those tough New Yorkers, one of those who have seen his city rise up after several tragedies. do New York tough? That's him.
"Right now I find myself traveling from the kitchen to the bathroom, stopping at the laundry room," we heard Waris Ahwulalia laughing about his most recent trips in the Instagram Live that he has shared with ** Ben Pundole **, his close friend and founder of A Hotel Life , an online platform that brings together and evaluates some of the best hotels in the world. "To entertain myself a bit I'm putting a customs in between", he continues smiling. How do you feel now about travel? They have always been present in your life, has it been something intentional?, launches Pundole as a question to one of the fetish actors of Wes Anderson's films.
"I fell in love with travel from an early age, with seeing new places and seeing the movement...of exploration. I would very much like to live again in those times when you could find new and unknown lands, cultures and experiences in their form. I love to travel to discover food and sights, but because of my job I have friends all over the world and that's what brings me to those cities. I travel to see my people . I love London, Paris and Istanbul and I love their buildings, but my love for them goes to a point. That does not happen with people, they are my greatest motivation and for which I have even more affection for those places.
Regarding his state of mind and how he is experiencing the lockdown in his home in New York, Waris acknowledges that he feels "strange, I'm on a continuous roller coaster... and I imagine it's a general feeling. I feel happy to be I'm alive, not sick, and I'm putting all my efforts into staying healthy, taking all the precautions and keeping my immune system 100%. But I'm also watching the world fall apart. And I'm suffering from it. I feel a constant sense of affliction and a duality: on the one hand, what is happening anguishes me, but, on the other, I see a small crack of hope that maybe all of this can lead us to a better place"
Waris is currently immersed in his work as founder of House of Waris Botanicals , a tea house – with a boutique store next to The High Line in Manhattan – that seeks to achieve physical and mental well-being and whose launch was celebrated just a few months ago with a midnight tea party at Top of the Standard , the hotel cocktail bar TheStandard in NYC.
With this project, Waris continues a line of work that, although it does not seem to have a fixed line, always manages to connect, even with tea: the elephants he has been trying to save for several years in Asia pass through the fields that supply to the House of Waris Botanical, lands now certified as elephant friendly, a situation that is usually the exception.
"The United Nations has defined stress as the 21st century epidemic and, in fact, you have been focusing on finding out what it means for our generation for some time," continues Pundole, thus linking the philosophy of teas with the "mental remedy" to the pandemic that the planet is suffering right now. "It is quite curious to sit down to to see how the world is using our brand language currently defining it as "the great pause", he recognizes Waris . "We have allowed ourselves to exist for a long time in a world that puts profit above people. Not only in the West, but also in the East. We are at a time when our rulers say that it is justified to sacrifice the lives of our older for the good of the economy and that is outright outrageous," laments the actor.
"But there is potential for change . We wake up daily not to the sound of birds or the first ray of light, but to the stress of an alarm. Then we go straight to coffee, which is a jolt of caffeine, and so on the way to work with the hustle and bustle of the cars, the subway, the jostling... All this will never stop, but we can do something in the way to face it.
When asked how he sees, being the quintessential New Yorker, the future of his city, Waris is resounding : "I have seen her suffer several times and I have also seen how her people rise up, time and time again, without giving up. She is suffering right now, but she is the living image of toughness. And that is why I am clear: New York will never will cease to be what it is."