Yorop Yodellings - Episode 2: Luhv-en City of Luhv

Been a long time since my last post. Many apologies. Had to recover my lower jaw from the abyss whence it had fallen. And that's taken a few weeks. Let me explain.

Ever asked a kid what he thought Heaven would be like? Well I'm too old to recall the harps-and-haloes wishes of the really young and ignorant kid, but I do suspect that the average adolescent dreams of a Heaven with some significant female element in it.

Awake, young men! Spread the news, oh ye gents! Come to Luhv-en, Belgium. Discover the land of milk and an abundance of people you'd like to call 'honey'.

What is it with this place, anyway? The answer does not lie, like some believe, in the idea that white women are more beautiful than those who look like they're covered in hot chocolate. The very idea is ridiculous, especially if you put it that way.

It simply stems out of a population imbalance here. You should see this place to believe it. A population that is 60% female and 40% male. Now THAT's something.

I am a student of business. I know what this means. It all boils down to supply and demand, you see. Fundamental principle: lower supply, higher demand (barring the odd exception). So now you have, for a change, a lower supply of the male chromosome. You recognize the implications?? Gosh wowie. You should see the demand shoot up. It's all reverse psychology, I tell you. Imagine a land where the men no longer do the chasing. Now ya know what I've bin a-talkin' 'bout?

It's a strange land, no less. Well, in Europe, there are couples and there are couples. And then some. But see a couple going at it, and inevitably, yes, it's the man being the prize to be sought after, the man who sits (or stands, or what-have-you) like a helpless toy as the woman has her fill of him. They're all over the place. The girl making a dessert out of the boy's face. The girl pinching the boy's back-pocket. Or what's behind it. Do I disgust thee? Well, at least I kid thee not.

Well, the value of men shoots up. And it takes someone from outside - like me, from a country like India - to see the difference, and tell them what a beautiful place Europe is.

But there are side-effects. Unfortunately. More women than men - well, you must have guessed already, the results of this. Not a one-to-one relationship between men and women. And since this is not Mormon territory, obviously there are bound to be some women, well, out of the loop. And these bachelorettes do good to society by trying to even the balance, finding luhv in each others arms. Yeah. They're flooding out of the market.

Chain reaction happening. Watch out for the next step. The young boys grow up, seeing this happen, seeing their potential girlfriends being snatched away into a world of delusion. And, unable to cope with the trauma, they seek luhv in each other's arms too. Golly. What a pickle. That's proliferating the imbalance, I say! But it's too far gone now to help.

I seen it, you know. The funniest sight. A bearded man in a flowing satin wedding gown, complete with veil and all, and the front kinda sagging from something missing. Where is the camera when you need it the most. Dang.

A progressive land, this. Ranked #6 in the UN Human Development Index, #1 in human satisfaction. #2 in the order of countries to make gay marriages legal. A warped, twisted land, this.

But a lot of it has to do with the nature of Europe. The best of Europe was born out of the Renaissance, a period that I had the misfortune of studying. Every person in that era who made any significant contribution to the arts, architecture, science, politics or even road-sweeping, turned out to be: (a) gay; (b) promiscuous, having several children that no one or everyone knew about; (c) all of the above. It was a period when all 6 popes who presided over that time fell into those categories a, b or c, and one very righteous pope even published his writings of erotic novels. Now how cool is that?

A gay and happy land, to be sure.

Romance hangs in the air, it sucks people into it, witting and unwitting. The romantic poets didn't insist hard enough that it was Romanticism, not Romance that they were writing about. Or maybe it was the Romans, making sure their name lived on even after the Evil Empire fell.

Most times the romance is sweet. It's nice to see men and women, young and old, holding hands and dotting every walkway. I've sat in tea shops and smiled indulgently at nanogenarian couples holding hands across the table and gaze at each other with the love-light still thick in their eyes.

Sometimes, though, in combination with a few pegs of the good old you-know-what, and under the cover of night, a couple might be found making love in the city square. Pornographic magazines stand all along the windows of main roads. Sex plays on TV at night, with special shows advertising one-night-stands if you call into special telephone numbers....

From a different angle - sometimes, also, one tends to wish the romance wasn't so infectious, when people from cultures alien to such behavior get sucked in and act in ways they wouldn't if the setting were otherwise. Extraordinary things can happen to ordinary people here. With results that can surprise even the European, which is saying a lot. Hm. No more on those lines.

Never mind that rant. The truth is, it's easy to be luhv-in it here. Luhv in 536 brands, easy to soak in like the beer that's flowing in every canal. The only difference is that soaking in every brand of beer is advised. The advice does not extend to luhv.

Yorop Yodellings - Episode 1: A Reason to Be

Well, here I am. In a curious little town in a curious little European country. Leuven, Belgium. At the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Which is basically the Catholic University of Leuven, but the brilliance of the Dutch lies in their ability to spell and pronounce English differently.

I claim I am here to study. To broaden my horizons. To be an ambassador of the Indian culture in an ignorant foreign land. Yeah.

Just a day into my stay over here, and they let me know of the real reason that I am here. It all boils down to the brain of the Belgians. Yeah. A brain with a historical background. You gotta hear this.

When I walked into the lecture hall where our benevolent professor was professing, his lecture had progressed into the some medieval period where Belgium was known for its cloth-making skills, and the City Hall of Leuven was some form of cloth factory. And then, for some reason that I didnt quite grasp because I was trying to find a seat, Belgium ran into a resource crunch.

This is where the promised brain oozes its way into the picture.

The Belgians realized that they did not have resources to make cloth, so they started making lace, which is essentially a tenth of cloth masquerading as the real deal. For some other reason that I again didn't quite grasp because I was trying to figure out how to bring up the foldable table in front of my seat and make my seat a recliner at the same time, the resource crunch crunched the Belgians out of the lace business as well.

So what did the Belgians do? They put their fascinating brains to work, and went to the kidney of the problem. What resource do we have in abundance that costs us nothing? Hm. Um. You know. Dunno. Of course, there is water...rain water... (this is a land where it rains 360/365 days of the year, but they still don't have water in the toilets, but we'll come to that in a later yodel.)

But what would you do with water? Well, throw 536 permutations and combinations of herbs into it, and voila! Presto! Or-whatever-else-is-the-word-the-Dutch-use-in-a-similar-context! You have 536 brands of Belgian beer. But who do we get to sample those beers and die for the noble cause of our country's economy?

Well, the university-town of Leuven is bound to have many eager takers. The powers that be did the math and figured they didn't want too many Belgian nationals tottering around the place while trying to bolster the economy. So thus began the international Student Exchange Programme at Leuven. I am here, they say, to sample all 536 brands of beer, and if I am lucky enough not to develop any unpleasant side-effects, I am likely to spread some positive word-of-mouth in the country where I come from to attract more suckers for the next year. Beer-suckers.

Of course, most exchange students spend a year here. That means 1.4685 beers per day. I, however, am here for 98 days. That would translate into 5.4694 beers in a day. Since I would be travelling a lot out of Leuven and Belgium, I suppose I might be here only for 2/3rds of that time, which would be 66 days. Subtract 12 Sundays from that for religious protest reasons and we have 54 days. Now we try to do the math again. With some rounding off, we land at the nice figure of 10 flavors of beer in a day.

Hm. Yeah. Now I know why I'm here. These Belgians do have brains. Kill two birds with one red-painted brick: get 1000 exchange students a year to each buy 536 mugs/ bottles/ whatchamacallits of beer, boost the economy of this little teensy weensy district trying to pull of a "country" act, and simultaneously drag down the economies of the countries visiting them because the representatives will be too reelin' away to contribute anything besides hics and hocs to their own countries thenceforth. And all that jazz.

Of course, Belgium is the home of Antwerp, the wonderful little hamlet where William Tyndale brought out the first printed copy of the Bible. Belgium proudly claims: "In the beginning was he Word, and the Word was with God, and with the Printers" [ sic]. And lo, Tyndale did publish the Bible in translations. His own translations. You see, the folks here insist that everything does indeed come back to beer in these parts (such as the first building of the Leuven University - the College of Languages Three - it now exists as a pub, to be found in some part of this town that I am yet to visit). Which explains why, apart from phrases such as "salt of the earth" and other such phrases that have lived on, the most famous phrase of all that Tyndale gifted to the Englyshe language was:

"Eat, drink and be merry".

Leuven, the guinea pigs have arrived. Do your worst.

To blog or not to blog... is that a question?

I've been starting a blog for as long as I can remember. Whenever something momentous had happened. Or was about to happen. Or optimistically hoping that something momentous might actually happen because God saw that I was starting a blog. Then there were times when I was starting a blog because I was thinking stuff. I'm hoping that does not count as momentous.

I remember that I was starting a blog when I joined my MBA course so that people outside would know of the life I lead. Unfortunately, I'm not sure even I know what kind of life that is, so I am still starting that blog.

I remember that I was starting a blog when I began my engineering course. I was sure that studying in a local Bangalore college where it was all play and no work would throw up interesting stories. Unfortunately, as long as the stories were interesting, they had me so tied up in them that I forgot to write, and when I thought of writing, the stories had ceased to be interesting. I am still starting that blog.

I remember that I was starting a blog when blogs were invented. Unfortunately, the fact that I didn't invent the blogs myself was a turn-off. Hate jumping on bandwagons, you see. I am still starting that blog, waiting for the bandwagon to derail so that I can be sitting pretty on my tricycle, feeling very happy about myself.

Spot the trend as yet? We can go further back than that, but I don't think it's necessary. I think I know it now - I was made to start a blog. With that realization in place, we have established a motive. The next thing is to establish a scene for the crime. Yup. It's my first trip out of India, and right now I am sitting comfortable in a cosy lil room in Leuven, Belgium. Thinking. Which makes it a healthy mix of momentous and unmomentous. Which is good, because life runs on healthy mixes. A scenario identified. A weapon? Ha. The keyboard, in alliance with the mighty Internet, is more powerful than the mightiest sword or gun or knife or rope or candlestick or leadpipe or what have you. So there we go.

So I was made to start a blog. So I have started a blog. So it's done, there's nothing more for me to live for. I will return to this scene of the crime every day with this weapon and relive the moment with my incessant type type type type type type type type...

May future generations read on and weep.