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Natalia Neykova from Bulgaria

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  I must have been really juvenile, mentally speaking. All of 22, thinking I had seen much of the world when I really hadn’t. I experienced my little share of life and thought it was a lot. A couple of years over a whole decade today, me looking back, I think I was silly, reckless, innocent even and, of course, somewhat stupid. Maybe quite stupid. I guess absolute calmness and wisdom came to me slowly. With age. At that time, when I had taken the bold decision to move abroad for further studies, I needed to find a link, a genuine friend who could help me break some ice in the new city and support my transition to comfort from newness. Natalia Neykova from Bulgaria was the one. She was much older than me. By ten years, if I remember correctly. I found her rummaging through the sheets on the college noticeboard one day. She looked hurried, lost and I was in an extroverted mood those early London days of mine. She had been trying to figure out what time her classes were on and what ...
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Far from the jabs.

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  It was such an awaited moment! And it got over within a couple of seconds. How quick the morning was! A prick is all I felt. If it weren’t the jab, my mind would have passed it off as a very gentle ant bite. It was all a breeze as I went back home after getting my first vaccination. One step closer to fighting corona, yay! For almost six to seven hours from that point in time, I felt nothing unusual. “No side-effects, eh?” I said, “Eh!” With the most relaxed smile on my face. After all, it was a Saturday morning. I wasn’t going to waste my weekend on something boring like resting. Or at least, that’s what I thought. Come evening, as the sun made way for darker skies the doors of my body opened to immense pain and its temperature went skyrocketing as if it were aiming to touch the moon itself. 102-degree celcius, out of nowhere! And I was shivering in a room with no fan and no air conditioning. I asked for a blanket in the middle of summer – where I would have usually turned d...
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Unshielded - A poem.

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  If I were to die, what would you remember me by? The way I looked? Or: The way I felt, and why?   I do feel a lot. More than one should. And it is not as trivial as how I simply look.   I feel it all. I feel it deep. The way that it is, it often makes me weep.   I feel your warmth when you seem all cold. I feel the hesitation when you're all too bold.   I feel your intentions when they are totally unclear. I feel the words that you never utter in fear.   I feel the beauty of you in places you call ugly. I feel the dreams you dream that need to breathe free.   I feel sorrows brimming, concealed in your smile. I feel your worries as you pace across the aisle.   I feel the desires you hold behind the curtains of your mind. There is more in leaps and bounds. More of you in me, as you are mine.   I feel more and more as time moves forward. I feel the songs of you...
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Find me in the woods.

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There's just something about long stretches of tall trees with sun beams peeping through spaces in between. There's just something about dry leaves crunching below the feet as I walk through the woods. Like juvenile wishes and dreams that die a natural death, the leaves I crush below my heels have died naturally  from seasons unfolding. The roots of the trees make the soil believe in bigger things. And so the branches dare to touch new heights aiming at the blue skies. Maybe they know what growing up means. I love the forests that are so wide and green. So full with life, yet so silent amidst the hills. Sometimes the noise breaking through the empty, cold air is that of birds, wild animals, tamed human souls wandering, and wandering. Hoping to never get back to concrete mayhems. But life goes on. And forests are left alone. But like I do, most do too, carry a bit of the woods in our tender hearts. A thing so huge can be destroyed by a simple jungle  fire. Just like all things ...
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Sunday evening at the men's salon.

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In my many years of being single I had various experiences with friends who were couples. With time spent alongside duos who were either married or seeing each other, I grew more and more independent in everything I did. Because I irritatingly marvelled at how many things for which girls usually depend on their significant others, can actually be done 'alone', seamlessly.  Once, in the wee hours of the night I was heading back home from a late night event and a boyfriend in the group insisted that he'd drop me first before he heads all the way to the other direction to drop his girlfriend. Courteous of him, but I said I could travel back alone and save him the trouble. Back then, had I not been single I still wouldn't have bothered my significant other to drop me anywhere if it were out of his way. I guess being single makes you incredibly lethal in terms of independence. And that's the greatest blessing that has come out of my solo days. I've traveled as much a...
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Self-entitled bunnies.

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We've all come across those highly demanding individuals who expect you to be on your best behavior around them and contrastingly, funny how they give themselves the liberty and comfort to be as impulsive and careless as they'd want to be with others. Welcome to the list of self-entitled, self-proclaimed know-it-alls. Like bunnies that are quick to pop out of nowhere, these creatures are those who can manifest in your day-to-day operations with no explanation, just to give you an explanation. It gets funnier when they think their opinion matters.  They don't care if anyone asked for their views. They just want to speak up regardlessly. They are highly sensitive about how much importance you give them. And highly critical of everything you do or don't do. They are easy to disappoint. Their minds are constantly thinking of trivial courtesies that they think the others ought to extend to them. They live in a bubble and sit on a throne - both invisible to others - from a di...
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Genuinely, yours.

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So there's this desperate need I've observed in people, especially those who are not really close to you, to want to assume your entirety from knowing very few aspects about you. Now, though this makes it extremely easy for  wannabes to impress anyone in the beginning, the reality will eventually surface. Isn't that the reason why we love to take time in knowing someone?  I think the most easiest thing to do is to impress and get impressed by aspects such as looks, the show of money, power, the presentation of something while it may not be so. And that is why the most beautiful thing I've seen in genuine humans is that they just don't try hard. Because there is always someone or something that will be better than you. Even the richest man has competition and the most explosive scientific theories still remain open to scrutiny. So why is it that we expect things to be any different for ourselves, most of us being rather ordinary beings? Is being happy for yourself, l...
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