Through my Eyes

It is the first weekend of spring 2009 for us. All of us were tired of being inside our apartment for the whole of winter. Without much plans, Mr D got a ‘Check out the groom’ interview in Jersey City. So we thought of clubbing a driving experience and an interview together for the weekend. On last Tuesday night, on half sleep D rented a car and he left a message saying he got a deal for ‘Ford Mustang’. We were on a high on Saturday about the car and went to the rental office on Saturday. We were received by an elderly chinky aunty.
Chinky Aunty: Hi Gentle man, How can I help you? or you want to proceed to the kiosk machine ?
D: Hi, we are here to take the rental car
CA: Your last name please …
D: He said the 24 character long name and handed his driving license.
CA: Oh ….You r taking mustang out for this lovely weekend. Have fun! We have a convertible also available! It is going to be sunny this weekend. Do you want to upgrade?
Me: How much it will come to?
CA: Don’t worry; I will give you 10 bucks less. Are you in? (Flashing a chinky smile)
D looked at me with a pleasant smile and I returned the smile
CA: OK, do you want full coverage
Me & D: yes

CA finished the formalities and she asked another lady to pull out the car for us.
When we got our hands to the car, we knew we are going to have a good time. For the first time in my life time, I had to look into the manual on how to operate the car. We were looking for the light button, gear shift lever, the hood open/close procedure and the audio system controls. Man this is what we call GIZMOZ! With a good car in hand, the atmosphere changes drastically. Everyone is ready to go out even if it’s a little on the cold side. We went out to HammanoZet beach on a chilly evening just to take snaps (posing with the car). Everyone had their dream snaps on a convertible. You know what happens if there is a digital camera, guys with nothing else to do and a sports car. In the crowd of 6, poor Mr. R had some thoughts of sitting lazy on the ground resting on the car, but see how the snap came out. Blame it on our creativity.

The best part about the car was its stability, sudden acceleration and comfort. Speechless about the audio system and wonderful power! Now I know how a Ferrari owner would feels when a Ferrari just zoomed passé s us. I had my hands on the steering and give a thought of giving a tough time to the Ferrari but before I could put my thoughts to action, Ferrari had long gone out of sight. That much for racing on the roads! We had our fun ride in jersey city with hood open with two of us with shades looking like vampires ( karinja vampires, vampires are meant to be fair, we are on the dark side!) People do look when you travel in a convertible, even if it was a rented car, it got style and we did turn some good looking blond heads.
These are some things which can be done only in US or such foreign countries. I can only dream about driving a merc back in India. A convertible will be not even in my dreams. But US gives you such wonderful options to have things for a day on rent and feel it like you own it. Only regret I had was on Monday when I stepped inside my good old ‘Vasumati’ ( that’s the name I had for my car, again we have mary kutty, meenakshi and kalyani around, mind you these are names of heroines in different Mohan lal movies except Vasumati). and peddled it, it was taking more than 12 secs to reach 60 MPH where as the FM would have jumped to 85 MPH in 7 secs ! .