Letter to my Beloved City


My dear beloved city,

This is the most essential matter of the utmost importance that I must do. I must say goodbye to you, as I am packing my bags to leave tomorrow morning.

With no extra cash in my pockets and a rather abused credit card, I’m returning to what I call a temporary home. All my books, paintings and sculptures were safely and securely packed and filled up the car to the last inch. However, let’s take a step back and tell you a bit about me and my love for you before I leave.

Let me pretend for a moment that I’m Ismael or Sindbad the sailor. Once upon a time, I built a tiny boat with my amateur hands just like a bird making its nest in the hidden corner of a tree. I sailed my boat from a faraway land, the Bay of Bengal. Since then, it has wandered, lost and found many different right and wrong ways. We voyaged into the distant shores, far removed from the spectator’s eye. The radar of my sail was frozen stiff, and I had coasted for years. During that time, I heard the melodies of silence and learned the cost of freedom of my own time.

After years of contemplation, the first time I sailed and stepped onto your shore was in 2019, just before the pandemic started. I came here to learn how to paint- or should I say, I sailed in quest for my wildest dream. The dream that everyone, including myself at one point, thought naïve and childish. However, with an ample amount of doubt, double the amount of fear and my entire life savings, I managed to arrive just like thousands of immigrants do every day. 

Despite the difficult living conditions, I was mesmerized by the sheer capacity of the human mind, by what its fortitude can accomplish. I have wandered about your streets with friends and a lover to witness the architecture, admire history, or simply be a spectator. The old red brick building and the small corner pizza shops – they have their own kind of charm. The sunset boat ride that goes under the Brooklyn Bridge around the Statue of Liberty. In the mid-June sweltering heat, I sat on that boat beside a very special human, watched the sun go behind the cityscape slowly and saw the reflection in his eyes. I have never been the one who claims to be able to articulate the full and proper definition of beauty; that probably is one of the reasons I am a painter and a sculptor. I suffer from a great deficiency of words. 

But I felt the beauty that day,

indescribable, 

unpaintable, 

uncapturable beauty.

 It was in the Manhattan sky, 

and his laughter.

The practical difficulties of finding a place to live here are challenging, and it’s getting harder every day. If safety, affordability and time efficiency are the requirements for an apartment hunt, then you are looking for a jackpot that you may never win. Of course, the possibility depends on the strata that an individual comes from.

New Yorkers often wear this thick veil of bluntness in the name of privacy; everyone minds their own business and lives on their own stories. However, the closer that I look, the clearer it reads as loneliness. Especially on the subways-more and more people with vacant eyes, a tiresome pace. They fill these cardboard boxes made to call home with their hopes, dreams and triumphs over mini battles called city life. Humans remain forever strangers to humans who have lived just next door for years. Even though, at times, it often felt like freedom. You step out of your apartment, and you can be anyone. No expectations, no burdens. As E.B. White wrote in his essay Here is New York “New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation”. It is one of your main attributes. If an individual wants to bury their solitude and fill it up with the hysteria of experience.  You have constellations of ventures to offer, whether it is waterfront, parks, lights or chaos of noise. If anyone ever wandered into Times Square or the financial district in lower Manhattan. I would ask them to pause for a moment, take a closer look at every human around them from a third-person perspective and try to narrate their observation just like a narrator in a book would describe. They may see the epitome of human frenzy toward consuming things. You are a cornucopia of entertainment, my dearest.

New York is forever pregnant with creative minds and entrepreneurs; small businesses like bodegas, restaurants, grocery stores, printing shops, art studios, performing companies, theatres, and galleries are just a few examples. These hardworking, stubborn dreamers have pumped blood into your heart and given you that vibrant soul. However, New Yorkers always take you for granted. Although 60% of it is a legitimate reality, they still fail to fathom your capabilities and capacity. 

One of the biggest highlights for me was the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It became my temple where, every other weekend, I would go to see the works of demigods conceived by the divine goddess of art. It’s like a palace for all the beautiful and brilliant who survived the absurdity of time and claim their places in the pages of history. I would pay a dollar entry fee and could travel through Asia, Africa, Egypt, and Europe to America, riding the time machine of Art and History. My usual routine was to pay my first visit to Count Ugolino and His Sons, a magnificent masterpiece made by 19th-century French sculptor and painter Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. I would always take a 360-degree walk around the sculpture and make so many secret paintings in my mind. I am quite certain at this point that the reason I picked clay is this sculpture. Its design, structure, silent poetry, its perfect merry dance of mind, heart and hand have cast a permanent spell on me. I would perambulate the halls just like the narrator of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own did in the library of Oxbridge, the only difference is the time that I belonged, no one would escort me out for being a woman. Yet, we still live in a time, where we walk around museums full of work created by men; row after row, column after column in words and pictures showing us how the world is and how it will be; take a walk through The MET from 1st floor to the Rodin Hall then to the European paintings and sculpture (19th and early 20th century). Rosa Bonheur’s painting The Horse Fair stands commanding space with grace and merit. How can you not be filled with hope, inspiration and desire to create something that human? Something that knows how to speak beyond time, culture, and gender. As childish as it sounds, I have stood in front of many works of art in this museum and tried to talk to the creator of the piece mentally. Tell them what I felt and ask if they would tell me what they felt.

Show me what I don’t see,

Talk to me,

I am an amateur priestess

at the foot of your door,

asking for sight.

You have created this metaphysical need in me. That is now as essential as food and love. I didn’t know how much I loved feeding my mind until I came to you. I had to wait to find you until I was in my 30s. I would stand there, talking to humans who lived hundreds of years ago. Just like how religious people go to the temple and talk to the god or goddess they believe in. Tell them all their happiness, sadness, grief, guilt or desire. I did that too, but with painters, sculptors, poets and craftspeople.

For the last four years, it’s been the time of the post-pandemic era. For an international student, that meant agony. My entire life savings fell victim to the vampire fangs of inflation. Each time I convert my Canadian dollar to US money, about 41%-36% of it evaporates into the oblivion of good politics. It was bad enough for me to sit down with a pen and paper to calculate and recalculate the cost of food Vs art supplies. Yet I will still say that one doesn’t need a lot of money to learn and enjoy the arts in New York; this is how much intellectual property your government and citizens own.

I have been in North America for fourteen years, yet you made me feel more at home than anywhere else. Walking down the streets of Jackson Heights has always taken me back to Narayangonj, where I grew up as a child. I guess the fact that nothing you have makes me feel like an alien in a foreign territory, even though I am in a foreign land with poor language skills. No matter where someone is from, there is a community here. They only need patience to find it. I walked onto your shore to be a painter; five years later, I’m a painter, a sculptor and ready to be sea-bound again. Time has its cruel way of speeding up when you are mindful of it.

 And so, I have come to this dreaded moment of saying goodbye. I knew this day would come sooner than I expected, and my heart would stop for a second. My graduation ceremony is done, and saying goodbye to my friends was the hardest thing I have done during my stay. Their love and care have made me richer than I have ever been.

As the world moves,
The rain washes,
The leaves turn,
The soft flakes of snow cover your body-
And mid-April cherry blossoms
Adorn you in pink and white,
Remember the moments we lived together.
Let Me Be in Your Heart
As unrequited love
and you
as my favourite poem.
Know that my seafaring soul
One day will return to you.
For a brief hello,
or a longed-for kiss.
Until then,
Take care of that reckless heart of yours,
As you always forget to do.

Yours,

Sindbad, Ismael or just Asha.

(Sometime in the summer of 2024, from the crossroad of a new beginning.)

Dear Mrs. Woolf

Dear Mrs. Woolf,

I have begun to create a room of my own.

Is it possible to correspond beyond the obstacles of time and mortality? Can you hear me over the thick walls of forever? Perhaps, this is nothing more than a naive attempt to reach you, yet I write.
Your profound words have shaped and shielded my mind for many years. You have walked with me through museums, galleries, libraries, bookstores, noisy gatherings, and intimate family parties. You have been part of countless conversations of women and their would-be, should-be, and supposed-to-be’s. There were moments when I stood in front of artworks and tried to imagine how you would think. What would she think? What would she say? I’m a lover of your mind, a 21st-century woman trying to reach you through ink and paper.

I dance my dance in paint and clay

As you have done Yours in ink

What are we- sisters?

Priestesses?

Or am I a daughter,

born out of your senses?

Sitting at the corner desk of my studio, I am surrounded by my paintings, sculptures, piles of books, and papers. Also, blank canvases, unfinished works, a wall full of inspiration, dried flowers, shells, a cracked mirror in the corner, and knick-knacks I collected for my still-life projects; these are my comfort. One of the reasons why I wake up in the morning with hope and energy. I imagine my sculptures as ancient Custodians of the temple, guardians of the wandering spirits. I am constructing this refuge for myself one baby step at a time. I started on my kitchen table years ago. Now, I have a little thought temple of my own.

It is early April; outside, Mother Nature is howling with a fierce wind. The winter queen stubbornly refuses to leave, and my tropical heart is growing impatient. Two of your books have taken up residence on my desk. For the last few months, they have kept travelling back and forth from my bed to the bookshelf, bookshelf to the writing desk, always within reach. I first read your essay out of curiosity, but now they are a necessity. It has been nearly a century since your lectures on women and fiction *1, and it is still as relevant as ever.

I have been walking my creative path for some time now. I have studied 19th-century classical oil painting and sculpture. This is my first year, fresh out of the academy. Far away from my intellectual community, I am learning to spread my wings. Sometimes, I feel like a small*2 fish in the middle of a vast ocean. Where absurdity is the main current. For the past century, the painter’s pursuit or the world in general has taken a different turn. Not in a good way, and I am not sure how much I want to discuss that with you. The more I look outward, the more inadequate it makes me feel. It scares and baffles my mind to see what greatness or betterment has done.

Hence, I do what for thousands of years all poets, philosophers, and painters before me have done. I turn inward to lose myself in the room of my own.

In the Temple of the Art Goddess, where everyone enters to seek beauty and find joy, do greater good with the power of knowledge, I walked in just to find refuge.
I’m a refugee, standing in the corner with the broken and bewildered. Grateful to simply be*3. Sheltered from the world and sometimes from myself. The one who does not know what or how to see beauty. Who often was and still is terrified to face some truth.
I know you won’t, but many call it escapism, and I don’t argue with them. They are not entirely wrong.

I thought about this confounding question, as many people have asked me quite often.

 Why do I do what I do?


The answer is never the same. I don’t have a clever or romantic answer on my sleeve*4. But I do have a question, one that I never ask out of sheer politeness. The question is, would you ask a bird why it sings its song even though people rarely pay attention to it? Could I not be like a bird* 5, exist solely to sing my song, and disappear? Nobody knows how she was born or when she went to her grave. The point is to sing the song and how much honesty she has in her voice.

Tell me, would you not understand?

You, who walked into a river with a pocket full of stones.*6

Something is telling me you’re smiling quietly.

Although I do have desires for what I long to become. Every work of art in my book should be part of a becoming. So, I ask myself.

What exactly am I longing for?

If I could go and knock on Doctor Frankenstein’s door. Ask him to make me into some creature. I would say, give me a poet’s heart, a sculptor’s mind, and a painter’s hand. This is the exact beast I want to become. I do not know how attainable such a transformation is, but I sure fantasize about having a conversation with the doctor.

Do you think I am being greedy?
For some reason, I hear your words echoing in my mind:

“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.” *7

I honestly don’t know how to close this letter. I have so much to ask-so many knots of dread, doubt and denial to untangle. The needle of self-consciousness is constantly pricking my tongue. If only I had the depth of your brilliance- your eloquence to say it, I would not have any trouble painting my pains in perfect order and harmony.

Yet, this is my first effort to reach you. A faint whisper crosses the universe.

I am writing this letter knowing that no physical answer is arriving in my mailbox. Still, I will keep trying to reach you, not exactly for “pure nuggets of truth”8 but for something quieter and urgent. Guidance. The kind Dante found in Virgil.

I do not seek answers so much as a companion to walk beside me through this foggy path of bewilderment.

Will you not show me the way?

Will you not hold my hand?

Would my common speech be an annoyance?

Do I dare? How much do I deserve?

I don’t know these answers. But I’ll keep writing.

Until we talk again- 

Ever yours,
Asha.
April 17, 2025
(From the room of my own.)

1* A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf.

2* Small does not mean weak; it means the mountain is bigger than I thought it would, and I must find a way to climb.

3* I say it like a player on the alter: Keep me, hide me, let me disappear in your infinity before the clever world finds me.

4* Although I wish I had one that I could deliver with brevity and confidence, the one that makes me sound smart and unstoppable.

5*if you are trying to warn me, for the birds that get hit by the tall glass building for chasing the illusion of the open sky. I have already thought about it. I am not clever enough to see it, but I am mindful of it.

6*River House, 1941. “Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again.” Your last words. Every time I read them, it breaks my heart.

7* A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf.

8* A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf.

When I was praying with my brush strokes

When I was praying with my brush strokes

 

When the fire is burning away

When all the children are dead and silent

When birds all stop singing

When piercing bullets Tear down human flesh

When the Children of Abraham

Disregard and divide themselves.

I am sitting in front of the mirror watching the world burn away.

Knowing no amount of opinions or brush strokes

Will ever bring the dead, lost childhood, Obliterated roads and alleys, withered hope.

Those runaway birds are never coming back.

They are afraid of us now.

They are silent as they are bearing All the sins of our choices and the burden of supreme intelligence.

Today I’m sitting here baffled

Gazing at my reflection

Searching and praying to the gods That abandoned us.

Today I am incapable of Thoughts, incapable of right doings and wrong doings.

The only thing I can do Is to pray with my brush.

Saying the prayer With each brush stroke at a time

To the gods and humanity Who are slowly forgetting each other. 

Sculpting Aja

Sculpting Aja

Before I catch another plane

Let me stay in this moment

and make it forever.

Before I go look for my home

Let me dance with you

And carry your footsteps with me.

Before the clay disappear

Let me hear you breathe in it.

Before the day ends

Before the timer stops

Before the silence breaks

Let me see your universe

And let you have mine

Let’s have each other a bit longer

Where this time has no time

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For My Muse

For My Muse

Let me love you a little longer 

Let’s steal moments from the universe, 

 elude the desolation of this supposed reality 

and keep you in my temple.

Let me love you with clay and color. 

I want to see you again with my hands 

From a quiet contemplation.

Sculpt those brows 

where I have kissed you 

a thousand times.

Let me break the mirror of foggy desire 

and see you as you are with brush strokes. 

Those lips that have whispered poetry

 in the hour of a sleepless night 

Let me see them with my mind’s eye

one more time. 

Let me marvel at your beauty and 

Stay in this infinity of you. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
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While drawing the self-portrait

While drawing the self-portrait

Then Arrange me and rearrange me
Right all the wrongs
I could think, sing, and hear
Hammer and chisel away all fragments called flesh and bone
Pin the soul to the pristine point of perfection.
Only then and there you might see
You are not looking at me
You are searching for your very own reflection.
 
 
 
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