Fast n Furious

Have you ever street raced? I normally don’t approve of any kind of street racing and more importantly I am not the racing types at all. Especially if you take a peek into my history, I have never been the sporty kind nor have I ever participated in my races back in school. Well, I take that back … I have actually won a lemon and spoon race during my eight grade annual sports day Jee!!! I am actually proud of myself *patting myself on the back* and when I go down my memory lane further, I have a vague recollection of participating in a 100 meters dash too. Of course it must have been because my P.E. teacher must have mandated us not_so_athletic types to join in and I can almost picture “li’l moi” grudgingly acceding but of course no points for guessing what spot I must have finished at *sigh*

Well coming back to how we got into this whole turning the pages of my memory lane. Street racing … aahaa!!! How did an athletically impaired person like me get into it? It all started this morning (Allow me to digress here once again and tell you that it was indeed one fine morning and I treated myself to a café latte on the way just to perk up my mood further, and to add to it the FM station was playing my favorite song, I’ll talk about songs on the radio and my superstitions some other time). So I was in high spirits and in my own sweet n smug world so I really didn’t notice much of what was going on. I have a long drive to work (a long journey would be a more apt term) and I have several stop lights to pass.

On one such painful red, I happened to glance around and whaddya see … a buddhhe miya(i.e. an old guy, hmmm… truthfully he was not that “pre-historic” either ;)) staring back at me. Well, I’ll tell you some other time about my trysts with these old n frustrated guys(actually I do have an earlier post that describes one such encounter). Anyways I gave him a “de rigueur” smile and looked away. I could hear the noise of his Porsche accelerating on top of the loud music I was already playing. I just let it be and looked fixedly at the light hoping that the power of my mind would change it to green. And it indeed did (psychokinesis indeed!!J), I told you I was having a good day so a lot of things were working in my favor.

As I drove forward, I noticed Mr. Porsche Boxster kinda trying to keep up with me, racing ahead and then falling back. I was thinking to myself, “Hello will you stop doing that or should I just ding your expensive car” and on the other hand I was thinking “thank god its broad daylight or else this 'jawani zindabad' would have scared the living daylights out of me” and just as I was thinking that we had to stop at a light again. And Mr. Toothless glory again grinned at me with his perfect set of dentures(well I don’t think they were, I am just saying that to make my story interesting). There was a queer sort of challenging look on his face (aahaaaaa uuhhuuhhh!!! .......toothless getting ruthless!!). After a couple of lights I figured what he wanted and very strangely indeed I decided to oblige. He was throwing this mocking challenge at me and THAT I could not ignore. He was trying to race with me all along and those winning smiles on his face at every stop light were just meant to tell me he won again. I developed a weird sort of empathy for this adventurous heart of a 20 year old housed in a “roaring twenties” envelope.

I decided to give him a fight (– after all hell hath no fury like a woman scorned – what say!!) And from then on I zip zap zoomed around in my “phat phati” Nissan Altima (Chal Chal ri Chal meri Ram Pyari J) and he in his shining black Porsche Boxster. We did this for almost 20 minutes and finally parted ways, waving a big “tat ta” to each other. And guess what I won the race, in spite of having “the lesser of the two vehicles” (tried hard to come up with something that would rhyme with the original phrase). But I guess Mr. Ol’ McDonald (that’s what I named him) just let me win this race J. Aaaaahhhh!!!! The things I do to make my morning drive to work interesting!!!

When I finally got to work I pondered back and wondered, “What on earth prompted me to play along with this old gentleman??” – (notice the condescending attitude metamorphosing into respect and regard – well he was not all that bad a buddhe miya I told myself, put him in the Big ‘B’ category ;) ). Why is it that some days you just let yourself go and throw all caution to the wind? I think sometimes you should do that. Just let your wild side out and let your prudence take a hike without really worrying about the consequences. Well today was one such day I guess, but am I not like that most of the time ..? Hmmm!!! Maybe!!!. What to do? I am like that only!!! … Impulsive, Impetuous and Reckless!!!