More than an Average Middle-class Down to Earth Mustang Rider

Boise is blanketed by snow today, giving it that very northern European feel or maybe it is my mind humoring my pro-European sentiment. Idahoans in this part of the state went to bed last night (well some didn’t I guess since yesterday was Mardi Gras, but those that did) hoping to drive into the sun as they set about to earn their bread and butter for the day, and do the same roughly eight hours later when they got back home (assuming most people with jobs aren’t homeless). However, they woke up today to find everything white.

As much as I detest the snow, I cannot deny the fact that snow brings about certain calmness to the landscape. It’s almost as if the land has just smoked a joint and is fulfilling some long-forgotten vow of silence. As I was driving to work today, there was a very very very light snow falling. It was almost as light as rain. This uncovers a very sinister side behind the calm façade I just referred to. Till I explain my theory you’ll probably safely assume the snow has frozen my brain. So here goes …

This a conspiracy between Snow (if you are a visual person, think of Snow as a spitting image of the architect of the Matrix, dressed in white sinister, spelt E-V-I-L) and the authorities whose job profile is to not salt the non-Highway roads here. They are out to get the average middle-class down to earth Mustang rider on the streets of Boise (if you are an aural person, think of The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm” playing in the background). The scenery is made all beautiful and stuff. Snow takes care of that, thus distracting the average middle-class down to earth Mustang rider, who of course, has a keen interest in aesthetic pleasures.

The very very very light snow makes the roads look just wet, not icy to the average middle-class down to earth Mustang rider, tempting him (yeah, I am not being sexually, thus politically incorrect here – they always are men) to rev the engine with the power of all the two hundred plus horses, as he would on a sunny day when the roads are as dry as Agastya Sen’s humor (no he is not a fourth cousin, but the protagonist of the book I am currently reading – “English, August”). However, being inherently observant, I noticed the ghostly white gleaming conniving ice waiting for the horses to roar and to see the underbelly of the Blue Lady (my Mustang). Also being inherently smart (read paranoid), I took my lady to Hasmukh Bhai (local Indian grocery store owner) to postpone death.

Hasmukh Bhai lived up to his name and gave me a pleasure-filled smile. Something told me that the smile was just a symbol of the happiness caused by beholding a customer this early on a weekday. For a moment, I was distracted by the pain with the realization that it wasn’t specifically my charming personality that had elicited the smile. However, focused as I was, unlike the average middle-class down to earth Mustang rider, I quickly told him about the attempt on my life. The smile vanished and I could see flashes of what I thought and hoped was determination in his eyes

Like all great leaders, Hasmukh Bhai spoke very little. You were supposed to decipher his mood from his many different smiles. Today, he just pointed to where he kept his rice to be sold. My mind, corrupted by capitalism, told me that he would only save my life if I were his first customer, but then, having inherently more vision than the average middle-class down to earth Mustang rider, I realized he was pointing me to refuge. So, I bought two ten pound bags of “Tilda pure Basmati” and placed them in my trunk, over the rear wheels. As I was pulling out of India Foods (Hasmukh Bhai’s den), I thought I noticed a twinkle in the eyes of the great man wearing that far away look when you know you have won the first battle in a long series of wars, when you try to be philosophical, not necessarily successfully, and a smile that seemed to say “Try harder Mister Snow”. What his pointed index finger had earlier reminded me in the shop was that Mustangs are rear-wheel drives. To the pedestrian, this means that riding fast in a Mustang is like running with your shoe laces tied together. Cool explanation, isn’t it? (I can’t really take credit for it. I heard this on Top Gear) Setting some kind of a heavy weight on either rear wheel unties the laces. So, I am alive, and writing this as an explanation to my boss for being late to work.