Slow down, glow up

Surrendering to the island codes of soft living, BANDANA TEWARI and UJJWALA RAUT discuss the abandonment of hustle culture, the act of owning your bliss and the secret to true beauty.

- BANDANA TEWARI and UJJWALA RAUT

There she is, in harmony with nature—international model Ujjwala Raut swiftly metamorphosing from jet-setting New Yorker into ocean nymph in a matter of seconds. Surrounded by the sands of The Sanchaya on Bintan island, a lush tropical paradise in the Riau archipelago of Indonesia, she can’t resist the happiness brewing inside. “What an invitation to pause,” she says. Yes, I agree, it is indeed a fertile place for daydreaming and introspection. Hers is a life of beauty—an everyday reality for someone cherry-picked by prolific designers like Tom Ford, Roberto Cavalli, Elie Saab, Diane von Furstenberg and others.

As the waves kiss her feet, I am reminded of what Leo Tolstoy once said: “One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between man and nature shall not be broken.”

“For me, after years of travelling and modelling,” says Raut, “true luxury lies in how quickly I can decouple my body and spirit and slow down my mind. Somehow, real beauty today is simply a feeling of bliss.”