Dear Mrs. Woolf,

Am I audaciously trespassing in your solitude again? I am writing with my restless heart. Do you have a moment?

If any fragments of my previous letter have reached you, I hope it finds you in good spirits. Words can be such a poor medium for expressing feelings, especially in the moments when you need them the most.

Lately, I have been reading your letters and journals constantly. I feel this deep urge to understand the very essence of you, just like the way I feel about some poem or painting. You may think of me as an obsessed admirer; the word is fashionable nowadays, but I would rather be known to you as a devoted lover. I promise I won’t make it poisonous for both of us. The more I search and see your brilliant mind, the more of a lover I’m becoming. Call it my Hamartia or think of it as hubris. You can blame the poets for this inconvenience, if you must.

 However, I was reading your correspondence with Vita Sackville West during my painting breaks. As I was mixing Raw umber with Lead white, I turned blue with envy. I’m talking about the dinner you had with her on July 1st, 1926 (and today is September 19^th, 2025). She had you as a friend and lover, someone to talk about poetry and literature and to discuss manuscripts.

Where was I? Why am I not there?

Today, one of the famines that I suffer from is the scarcity of minds that I can talk to about poetry, literature, or people in general who know how to dance with imagination. Everyone is too clever, too skeptical, too quick to read for understanding. Everything is a sport and a spectacle. As sad as it often is, I am one of them, too.

 I find myself getting to the point first instead of understanding the poetry of it.

 I know what you’re thinking; Don’t you have this magic mirror called the internet, social media, a modern-day invention for isolation cure? Well, a 2D flat glowing screen has never been my cup of tea for communication, nor a remedy for loneliness. So, here I am painting my painting on the canvas of your mind.

The door of my studio is closed, and I left my phone in the kitchen. However, the phone is not the biggest distraction inside the studio. It is usually the poetry books if I am painting, and when I write, it’s my paintings and sculptures. So often I still write on my kitchen table, but today I am in the room of my own. My mind is a little too unsettled to be elsewhere. Therefore, with ink and paper, I am conjuring you from the river of time.

You have a very particular way of talking to me. As much as you like to poke the veils I carefully put on, you also help me pick up the broken shambles that I am too scared to go close to. However, lately I have been working on perishables like flowers, leaves, fruits, and vegetables. So, my studio smells of fresh flowers, stems, leaves, and dried petals. Some are on the wall, some in the jar, and some of them are scattered around the floor. Would it shock you if I told you that I am painting them not because of their beauty but for their constantly changing shape and ephemerality? No one is a better teacher than Mother Nature; she has so many hidden mysteries in her womb without bias. The only place where everyone is treated equally, regardless of their race, gender, or strata. Nature is what she always has been: wild, indifferent, and uncorrupted. It’s us humans who are masters at pretending to be something we are not. Like William Blake said-

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And Heaven in Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour”

So, the palette that I hold is my infinity, and nature is eternity. I’m trying to be the mirror between the two worlds.

The question that I ask myself is now, how much of my own infinity can I endure, and how much capability I have to see nature’s eternity truthfully?

How dearly do I want her blessings?

Not to just look but to see with my mind’s eye.

I want my paintings to dance to her rhythm. So, I choose to work from life to learn her ways. Are you thinking- how else does someone paint? If you are not painting from imagination or taking some reference from a photograph. Well, let me send you a quick and crude snippet from the 21st century for you to understand the time I live in. You will know what and whys very easily.

This is something that didn’t exist in your time; We have created an intangible data program that has an ocean of information. It can mimic thinking to a certain extent. When you ask a question and it will give you an answer based on the data it has compiled with a certain level of accuracy.

However, how unbiased or truthful is it? That is my question.

 With the blessing of technology, we are now capable of being most productive and can consume an infinite volume of data. Among other commodities like food, clothing, and entertainment, we are also addicted to consuming mass amounts of information.

 And what is scary is that it often sounds like intelligence. Many contemporary painters, writers, or creators in general are using this new technology to generate ideas and images to work with. They write words or feed them a collection of images to create something they can modify with words or paint and copyright it as their own. As they advance with this technology, the line between created and generated is getting blurrier every day, and the question of safety, honesty, and purpose remain unresolved. However, I must admit it has incredible utilitarian use. It took away the heavy burden of data analysis, which can help us make more precise predictions of natural or financial disasters, market analysis, etc.

So, when I am working, does this new phenomenon make me insecure about my own work? My dearest V, the answer is no. The Human brain is like a sharp knife; the more we use it properly, the sharper it becomes. So, when technology offers convenience, it comes with a price. It’s like Tom Riddle’s diary as much comfort as it gives us, it is also taking our soul or mind as a bounty. Robbing the power of thinking individually and independently.

Why does a poet write poetry? You can’t physically own a poem, and yes! The way everything is advancing, AI will generate content that will create an illusion of poetry, too. So, does it mean poets are all going to stop writing poetry? Of course, they won’t, but what is concerning is that we become what we feed ourselves. Consciously or subconsciously, we are feeding ourselves things that are void of human touch- in short, honesty of creation. And if we keep feeding ourselves this, what is going to become of all of us in the next hundred years?

I have become what I am today by searching for you and many other individuals from history who created with honesty and humility. So, as an individual, I wonder the most is, as the line between content and creation or truth and lie is thinner, what essence of ourselves exactly are we leaving for the future generation? What kind of cost are we going to pay for this Faustian bargain with Mephistopheles? 

I know I am walking with you, having all these heavy questions. But sweet Virginia, as I am asking, I have never stopped creating in every capacity possible. I simply don’t know any other way of living, whether this vast created or generated world acknowledges them or not.

As I was saying, I did come with an agitated mind, and monkeys inside my brain never stop asking questions. But know that I just don’t write to you to send you the news of imminent doomsday or look for a brilliant answer to my unsettling questions. I am talking to you because your presence has its own way of untangling my thoughts. Thank you for holding my restless heart with your gentle hands.    

Yours,

Asha.

(Your Lover between the Mirrors)