la ville

for the longest time now, I have been wanting to write about the city I currently live in, Pune. Something, somehow, is stopping me from actually coming up with anything worthwhile. So, in the meanwhile, I took a two-day trip to Mumbai. A city I have spend two years living in and many, many trips exploring. I love Mumbai. Bombay.
It just has so much character, so much soul! Every building, every street, every face has stories.
Life is definitely not easy in Mumbai, but it's still a city with the brightest smiles (and probably the fattest wallets too!) Mumbaikars have a pace which I can hardly keep up with, even if it is just to observe. I have absolutely no clue how I caught on with them for two years and then retreated back to my usual self. I guess I could just blame it on Goa. And Goa, by the way, is my favourite place on earth. You don't need to know me too well to know that.
Bombay is the best place for people-watching. I could be a little biased in that though, as I love Bombay people. They are hard-working, smart, nice and justplain awesome. The Capital, on the other hand, has a different breed of people. I may be prejudiced against Delhi-ites, but this is my blog after all and I will say what I feel.( even if I point at this and laugh a few years from now)
People make a city? I think not. Delhi is a nice city. Horrid climate, but nice. The people often take after the climate. I say that even though I'm supposedly "from" Delhi. Delhihas never made me feel like I belong there. More Delhi bashing for later. Interestingly, I have a lot of friends from Delhi ( the few exceptions) and a lot of friends who love the city.
Till Class 3, I've lived in Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai and Vishakhapatnam. And then, I moved to Panaji. Panjim. That is where I'd be 365 days a year, if I had my way (and if I wasn't so accustomed to change).
Goa is the only place where my jigsaw piece fits. Here, people make a place? Perhaps. But even if you take away every friend I have there, I'm sure that i'll make new ones. Irrespective of the people, that feeling I get the second that I'm there is absolutely priceless.
Goa is a state. Since this post is about "la ville", the city to talk about here would be Panjim. The pace of this city, is the pace at which I work. I truly believe that I am manufactured for Panjim. I have chapped lips all year round, except in, very specifically, Goan monsoons.
Thus, Panjim, is home.
Mumbai, is the city I will observe and cherish and shop in and write about.
Delhi, is where I was born, where 95% of my relatives live, where I shop, whose history I love, where I cannot live ever again.
Pune, is where I am.

and nothing ever happens...and I wonder..

While most people have "writer's block", I have writing blocks. I write sporadically and as and when I feel like. One of the "blocks" happened last night, when I ended up typing an (atleast 250 word) essay as text messages. But no, couldn't have possibly posted it here. That was major blogging of an intime kind.
So hold up. Wait for me to come up with something which hits here.
hopefully, soon!

silver

One of my favourite poems, EVER.
Judge me based on this. I wouldn't be happier.

Silver
 Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in silver feathered sleep
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws, and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.

Walter de la Mare

Glass

A few weeks ago, a studied about Gestalt psychologists which basically believe that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Around the same time, I smashed a small juice glass. Due to my inability to mutli-task, I didn't see where my left hand took the glass while I read the juice carton as to why exactly I had apple juice in my "litchi swirl".
The glass hit the hard granite kitchen platform with such a great impact, that it shattered into a million pieces before I knew what i just did. I hate it when glass breaks. Until a few years ago, i'd shed more tears for broken glass than for bleeding people.
However, when i saw the "mess" the broken glass had made, there wasn't even a bit of negativity in me. That was because the glass had shattered into millions of little shards. Little crystals, almost. They lay all across the kitchen floor like glitter dust. Shards of shattered sheesha . It was breathtakingly beautiful because of the mundane and ordinary origins of that beauty.
This made me re-think about the Gestalt saying. There, obviously, was much more utilty in the whole glass than its pieces. But you could, technically, reuse those bits of glass and make something else. However, it was the aesthetic value of the shards which appealed to me. No doubt the shards were dangerous. But so beautiful! And compared to that plain-Jane juice glass, the metamorphosis didn't seem like the worst thing. My mother wouldn't even believe that it was the juice glass which caused this. She was sure i'd broken one of her much fancier crystal bowls or something.
Anyway, after a couple of insomniac nights of thinking about it, I concluded that the whole is better, only if you can see all of it at the same time.
Like life. If we argue that what we do in our whole lives, in general, is more important than the little bits, we need to realize that we cannot see our whole lives in front of us at any time! Maybe once we're done with it and look back at it like a flashback.
But, while we look at life from all our various angles and sit and analyze it, we must remember that every little moment is much more beautiful individually than the "precis" that we could write about life, in general.
thus, enjoy every moment. It may or may not make it to the "big picture", but by itself it could show you some amazing beauty.
:)

Hope

The things I studied in the first 10 years of my schoollife have made huge impact on what I am today.
One of our lessons in Class 5, maybe, was "Pandora's Box". The story told time and again of Pandora who found the box full of troubles and pain and sadness. A take on the Fall of Man described in the Genesis, now that I think of it.
My favourite part of the story was the part where the Hope Fairy emerges out of the darkness as a bright light, a ray of hope :)
My life has led to situations most people haven't been in. Some because of my super-adventurous parents, some because of my bad decisions and others because life loves to take you to places where nobody has ever been before.
I've seen darkness. Some which was obvious, something everyone would have felt. The rest of the darkness was when I decided to shut the source of light stupidly.
Through all of this darkness, i've seen Hope. the fairy.
I'm one of those people who believe in Magic and fairies and miracles and other things cynics ignore. So for me to believe that a fairy (or someother direct message from the omnipotent) would come and take me out of the darkness, was much easier than believing that I will change my life myself.
Hope has been my motivation more often than anything else. I have a very active imagination. Hope lets me think of the amazing things that could happen in a future far away from the present static.
To say that one of the most important things in my life is hope, would not be wrong at all.

a little bit about the origins of the blog name..and maybe the origins of the blogger...

so hello again, internet.. :)
this is probably my fifth attempt at blogging, many under pseudonyms too.. well, don't we all grow up? i'm glad I did. So, de tout et de rien, translates into "everything and nothing" in French. A language I love and a language I am definitely going to learn as much as I can.
I wish to express as much as I can in the best way I can on this blog. But, not gonna promise much because I am one of those really, really, yes...really lazy persons. I hope I get myself to write as much I should. I think a lot. I must write what I think.
oh, and Thing A Ding Ding, was one those strange toys I had as a kid. It was the kind with which you make things out of strange parts. So, here I propose to make nice, logical sense of out my strange,weird thoughts. That definitely made more sense in my head. Anyway, let's see if I do come up with nice things to share with the world. The sad part is that all my "creative" phases already came and went during the time-comsuming and attention-seeking examinations.
Yet, let's keep the faith.
In me:)
Peace!