About Me

Hi! I’m Nayla

Thank you for checking out my website.

If you’re here for the short version: I’m a writer and artist who also happens to have a day job, a brain that won’t quit, and a long-standing fascination with what it means to be human.

I’ve always felt like a cultural mosaic… beautifully complex in theory, but hard to hold in one piece.

I’m Indian by heritage. I have East African family roots. I was raised across four countries. I’m a mix of accents, traditions, languages, and ways of seeing the world.

And for a long time, I wasn’t sure who I was supposed to be in the middle of all that.

So I became skilled at shape-shifting… blending in where I could, toning down what felt inconvenient. Quietly collecting contradictions I didn’t know how to resolve.

Stitching myself back together has been my true life’s work.

(Yes, there’s also the day job I love. It pays for the thread.)

It took years, false starts, and more than one late-night reckoning. Yet with patience (and an annoying habit of turning existential spirals into accidental self‑help), I began to make peace with myself.

I stopped seeing everything about me that didn’t “fit” as flaws to hide and started seeing it as richness. Texture. Evidence of a life deeply lived.

Instead of trying to resolve the tension within me, I let it be beautiful. I let it belong. And strangely, that softened something in me.

The shame that once whispered, “Pick a side, be clearer, be less confusing” quieted.

I began to trust that I could hold multitudes and still be whole.

I hope that my writing and artwork help you settle more deeply into yourself. Because when we’re at home within, we can make more room for each other. That’s the kind of belonging I’m trying to create, one sentence… one brushstroke… at a time.