Saturday, July 16, 2011

36 Hours of Sin - Chapter 2

Disclaimer : This post may not be suitable for audiences below 18 without parental guidance.

Chapter 2
Did we just land into a casino?
oo hours to 01 hours

They say that Vegas is different, Vegas is unique, and there is no city in the entire length and breadth of this country that can even remotely resemble Vegas. And I thought,
'How different can it be? I mean it's just a city with casinos, in the middle of a desert in Nevada, whose lights you can see from outer space...how different can it be?'
'How different can it be? It's just a city where people within a blink of an eye, get bankrupt, get wasted or even get married to strippers...how different can-
'

I stopped this chain of thought partly because it began to defeat my original logic and partly because I somehow managed to walk into a casino, the moment I boarded off the plane! Yes, you read that right - we landed right into a casino!

With my heavy bag weighing down on my shoulders, and my back aching with the tiredness of air travel, I found myself standing on a plush carpeted floor in the midst of hundreds of whizzing and glittering slot machines. Slot machines were everywhere! They were there standing beside check-in desks, they were near water fountains, they were in front of luggage carousels, they were even placed outside restrooms! Heck! The entire airport was infested with these species, these merciless sirens of the modern world that tricked many a greedy traveler with the ruse of making a quick buck or hitting an entire jackpot. It took me a good minute or two for the reality to sink in - McCarran International Airport was a frikkin' casino! (And only would I realize later on, that there are more slot machines in Vegas than there are toilets, ATMs and vending machines all put together! Slot machines were omnipresent, omnipotent and omni-everything!)

Apart from doubling up and serving as a casino, the airport was full of advertisements. Not a single piece of naked wall could be seen, as hoardings upon hoardings decorated them like wallpapers. There were advertisements of casinos and hotels, which cajoled the already mesmerized travelers into checking in at their plush suites; shows and performances, that catered to every age group imaginable - from musicals like the Lion King, theatrical shows like the Cirque de Soleil and magic shows of David Copperfield; to more adult oriented shows like Criss Angel's Mindfreak, Playboy Standup Comedy; to more kinkier shows like Holly Madison's Peepshow (oh boy! what a name for a show!) and of course I assume that there would be others whose posters they could not have possibly put up in the Airport!

But there was one poster covering almost one entire section of the hallway that was jarring and annoying to the eye. It read 'Chippendales' and it had the picture of 5 barely clad muscular dudes showing off their six pack abs. I asked in a partly disgusted and partly envious tone, "Dude, what is that?"
"Oh, I guess that's a strip club for women," A replied. (A and K were the two other members of our three man wolfpack.)

And when I saw hordes and hordes of ladies excitedly chattering away amongst themselves, in their sparkling and skimpy outfits, I realized that Vegas was as much a place for estrogen charged females as it was for those testosterone driven males. (And what was most surprising was that there were more women in Vegas than there were men!)

We decided not to wait for our third friend (K) who was driving in from Arizona and was supposed to pick us up at the airport, since it would take him about an hour to reach Vegas. After all, there was a fantastic room at MGM Grand that was eagerly awaiting its new temporary occupants.

"So, we'll ask K to come to the hotel directly?" I asked.

"I guess so. We'll take a cab then?" A suggested.

"Dude, MGM is just like a mile or so away I guess," I responded after scrutinizing the route shown by Google Maps, "Let's walk. We'll get the true feel of Las Vegas, that way!"

"It's gonna be hot outside," A warned.

"So what dude? You think I can't handle the heat? I've been brought up in Delhi. I used to play cricket when it was 40 plus outside. Let's go," I said.

"Suit yourself," A shrugged and followed me outside the doors of the airport terminal.

And as we stepped out of the airport and landed our feet firmly on the sinfully opulent soil of Las Vegas, it felt as if we had walked right into a furnace. My skin burned and my body felt as if it had been set on fire and an invisible shadow of incessant heat descended down on me, swallowing me into its fiery, infernal mass! To put it in simple words - it was insanely hot. Like delhi-in-mid-june-3pm-hot! And for a person who had been forced to acclimatize to bone chilling temperatures of -25 degree celsius in the unforgiving village of Lafayette, this oppressive heat seemed too much handle.

"Dude, cab...please," I grinned shamelessly.

As we walked towards the taxi stands, we saw a couple of sleek Lincoln Limousines gliding away from the airport. A looked at me ogling at those elegant machines and said, "You know, we could ride in one of those...those limos are taxis."

"Wow! It'll be so awesome riding in a limo! Let's go!" I chattered like an excited child in front of a candy store.

"But it'll be expensive," A said in his typical warning ridden tone.

"It's alright. We are earning now." I said.

"Ok. But let's just check the prices for the normal taxi."

"Shouldn't be much. I mean, MGM's like 1.8 miles away or something. Shouldn't be more than 7 to 8 dolla-"
I was cut short when my jaw dropped at the prices listed on the taxi stand - a dollar for every 13th of a mile.

"And that would be more than 20," A looked at me with a mischievous smile on his face.

I adjusted the collar of my polo tee-shirt and replied, "Let's just wait for K...he should be reaching here any minute."
And I continued looking at my watch long after I had seen what the time was...

3 comments:

  1. Gah, too much taxi shit, too sparse Vegas sins. Don't tell me there will be 40 chapters, you're tantalizing your readers tooooooooo much !

    ReplyDelete
  2. Haha...Just got carried away flexing my writing muscles :P Don't tell me you didn't like the narrative! :P (After all, its inspired by Sir Golding ;) )

    ReplyDelete
  3. Love the description...I guess these words came from the eye rather than your mind...

    ReplyDelete