The Belgium Story :Part 4 - The Castle of the Counts

Every year around the months of June- July, a strange procession sets out on the streets of Ghent. The citizens of Ghent parade the city barefoot, with black and white nooses around the necks. On the 3rd of May 1540, Ghent was witness to a similar procession. Only that, that day, it was neither a celebration nor a tradition. There was no cheer in the air around.It was a show of public humiliation.

The previous year Ghent had risen in revolt against Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain. The city was by then an international centre of trade and industry and therefore an important source of revenue for Spain. The Flemish felt that the the taxes were used only to fight wars abroad. Determined to bend the stubborn head of the citizenry, the emperor obliged the city's nobles to walk in front of the him barefoot wearing nooses . Ever since, the people of Ghent have been called Stroppendragers (noose bearers).Ironically Charles V was born in Ghent.

The Belgium Story: Part 3

The man who sat next to me at the game offered me his cigarettes and half of the pear he was eating. I was sitting under the incessant drizzle at the historic centre of Ghent, my eyes glued upon the big screen, and hopes still clenched on a Latin American victory.With each German goal, the man would jump up in delight. Then he would turn around to commiserate with me drowning me in a cloud of cigarette smoke. This was a strange world cup! I watched it in five towns, under scorching sun or downpour, sometimes over a chilled beer and sometimes craning my neck over the shoulders and heads on the street-side. But no matter what i did, each team I had my bet on would leave the ground their heads hung low.

I left my dead drunk, cigarette smelling and now happy companion, to resume my walk around Ghent.I have been walking the whole day- a city map open in my hands. I must have been quite a sight!-- turning the map in all directions, bumping into something every ten feet and almost standing on top of map to decide where I am.But, Ghent is worth losing your way in.

The Belgium Story: Part 2

There are some days when I think, I am going to die of an overdosis of satisfaction- Salvador Dali

One night, a couple of years back there was a public meeting in JNU. Stanly chettan informed me that at that point in history Sidharth Varadrajan was wearing a moustache just like that of Salvador Dali. Somehow, that was the first thing I thought of as I glanced at the pompous looking man gazing back at me from the entry ticket to the permanent Dali exhibition housed in the ancient Belfry of Brugge.

Barron Saint Mythelfinger has transformed the medieval hall into a showroom that goes perfectly with the works of art on display. The exhibition includes a vast collection of watercolours, paintings, drawings, series of graphic work and authentic sculptures of Dali with their multiples.

Honestly, I am not the best connoisseur of art.All I can say is that I liked some of the exhibits and some rather less, that I was surprised by his renderings on 'Alice in wonderland' and 'The Old man and the Sea', and that the series on the twelve disciples neither had twelve paintings nor the disciples.

I was in Brugge. Here one cannot step out of the surreal exhibition hall to the real. Brugge is like a book of fairy tales thrown open on the streetside that you accidentally step into. Then you get lost in her alleyways and boat trips. Or, linger like me in front of the neo- gothic front of the post office building, expecting the wary messenger to arrive on his horseback anytime.

The Belgium Story: Part 1

Back in school, I had a book of paintings. One of the pages showed a water colour of a countryside. Two bands made the background- blue for the sky and a lush green for the meadow. Set on the landscape were tiny brown and gray houses with conical roof tops, chimneys and window panes of wood. Around them were a number of trees, close in space yet separated enough for their foliage to achieve a perfect symmetry. Wooden fence poles crisscrossed the landscape.

It was a beautiful picture yet unfamiliar and unreal.The half an hour train ride from Brussels to Ghent saw many replications of the same scene. Once the frame was occupied by a couple of horses. Often white cows with large black spots or dull gray sheep walked across it. My first image of Belgium was of this counrtryside through the train's window. I was too preoccupied catching the right train and then finding a seat to notice the city of Brussels pass by.