Name: Geeta Taneja
Place of birth: Delhi, India
Nationality: Indian
Occupation: Historian, painter
Date of arrival:  Some time in 2003

Geeta Taneja has been teaching history for some 20-22 years, and at a hot summer afternoon at Sheraton, over a coffee, she says she misses it a lot, although many of her students still keep contact with her.

But then comes the Bulgarian school code for accepting foreign teachers that gets in the way of her continuing to teach here, and the code goes something like: Before a non-native can teacher here, first the school has to identify its need for a teacher for any particular subject; then inform the agencies that provide it with teachers; then the agencies would refuse, saying that they do not have a qualified one; and then the school would need to advertise its needs; and when someone eligible comes up, it would need an approval from the Government; but the teacher would need a work permit that covers only a particular period of time; and if that work permit is to be renewed, it would happen through the same procedure - and that takes three to four months; which means that no school has so far co-operated with Geeta.

So Geeta went like: "Ok then, let me write a book," and she wrote a book and called it Easygoing and Interesting World History. And presented it (in Plovdiv, March 2006) along with coconut sweets with Indian herbs she made herself.

A secret about the book (already published in other newspapers) is that the idea came from a student she once taught in Estonia. (Geeta taught there for six years.) So, one fine day, before leaving to study in Switzerland, the student told his mother: "You can throw away all of my notes, save those on maths and history", because one day he would write a book.

And as Geeta and the international teacher-bugging system in Bulgaria would have it, Geeta wrote it instead, using proven tactics from her experience in teaching students of diverse backgrounds - not going too much into detail (because people do not tend to like going very deep into history, only enough to have a decent discussion, she says), and rely only on fact [because of the unproven nature of it all - which is why Geeta would say that (if asked to), she would compare history to a sea because of there being so many unexplored things about a sea, unlike a river (which Heraclitus would probably fancy, being the one who said that people couldn't step into the same river twice)].

But then again: she insists that her work is a work in progress that she would always go back to fix, and when challenged with the Macedonian ambassador to Bulgaria's saying that people shouldn't argue history because history is not a science and is too subjective, she would say that science is not history either, being rather too objective, and would dismantle the challenge with a laugh.

Her life in Plovdiv is nice, she says. She has been there with her husband for the past three years, and has started a second occupation: painting. She likes painting flowers and the Indian god Ganesha. And sometimes does it at night.

The problem is, she then can't part with her paintings because she is so attached to them. And even if her husband would urge her to finally start selling, she won't, and slips away with promises of making an exhibition when she has 15 paintings ready.

Bulgaria is a very beautiful country, Geeta says, and asks how come Bulgarians are so nice and happy, to which the author can't answer. One thing she doesn't find nice about Bulgaria, though, is the way people smoke, women particularly. Otherwise, Bulgarians are much like Indians, she says, and mentions looking after the elders, male dominance, and the like.

Something similar can be said about language as well: she is learning Bulgarian quickly because, one: people are nice (unlike in Estonia, where they were so cold that she never learned the language); and, two: there are so many words that have jumped from Indian into Bulgarian, like ogun (fire), chorap (sock), deva (virgin), perdeta (curtains), sapun (soap), den (day), cheshma (fountain), bakshish (tip).

Also, she loves Bulgarian food and has learned to cook it, particularly shopska salata (shopska salad), kavarma, grah (peas), torta garash (garash cake), banitsa s tikvichki (banitsa with courgettes), which are her favourites.

So, Geeta is obviously not a person who likes experiencing a lot of cultural shock, although she used to find it a bit strange to have Bulgarians stare at her Indian clothes "as if I am walking to a fancy dress competition or something".

And when she leaves on her annual 10-15 day trips to her home town of 15-million-people-packed Delhi, she finds herself homesick (Plovdiv-sick), and talking to her friends about Bulgaria; and those sometimes come and visit, and are amazed.