Guha girls and guns

What a perfect start to a holiday.... breakfast over tight butts and beautifully musclar backs in the window across, grey skies tempered by buckets of rain, reminiscent of monsoons in Bombay, sploshy puddles, no cabs, rude waiters and a fourteen minute lunch in Chinatown before a quick dash home to pick up forgotten id (yep - mine). Then up a couple of blocks at a fast trot... to the shooting range. Or as some might say, Welcome to America! In a Manhattan basement with a strip club over it. Flawless - everyman's wet dream.
A brief instruction presided over by a cheerful young man of redneck sensibilities who very encouragingly told the only lefty in the room, "Whatever I do, just do the aaapposite" (very different 'aaa' sound that the guy outside the apartment selling 'aaaambrellas,aaaambrellas,aaaambrellas' - definitely a Dhaka lad). Well, lesson over, and pithy release forms absolving them of any liability if you shot or got shot at and died :), duly signed, we were allowed to load our cartridges with .22 calibre bullets. Ten of us, industriously shoving those fidgety little things with all the tongue peeping concentration of 8 year olds in a sweat shop, sneaking sideways glances to see how much faster you were than the others. And then, protective goggles (a distinct challenge to those sporting glasses) and headsets (entirely ineffectual next to a magnum user next to you!!), and hey, you're good to go.
What can I say that you can't guess already? Load, aim and fire. Semi-automatics with five rounds at at a go (used to be ten, so now just half the fun)... and once you're in the groove, it's scary how quickly you can dump the used cartridge, reload and fire off another round, shell casings flying over the place, some ricocheting off the partition, others whizzing by your face, the heat of their trajectory palpable. It's heady, and before you know it, you've run through you're 50, objectively squinted at your peppered target and then, off to get another box of 50, frentically loading the cartridges, fuming at the lost time on menial labour. And then... you're tacking a fresh target and watching it whirl away into the distance, and you're back in business. Ruined manicure, smudgy fingers, ignored rotator cuff damage, forgotten new coat gathering dust on the floor. Hah! I'm in the groove, load, aim, fire, chuch, reload, fire, chuck, reload, fire..... bloody addictive.
For some obscure reason, they don't let you try a handgun unless you have a license. Bummer! I'd have really like to give that a go. The friendly dude next to me (ex military) was letting off a .375 magnum with abandon on a man shape target (we only got bulls eye bits) - an ear shattering, kaali potka sound with each round. After some mild chitchat and gentle persuasion, he did let me hold his gun (no really, his gun...), and that thing is really heavy and so Dirty Harry! Did I also mention he had a glock clipped to his waist? I have it on good authority that there is a range in Vegas that lets you do handguns with a license... the Guha girls are really looking to scale down from rifles to handguns. Just goes so much better with our look, not to mention less fiddly cartridges to deal with. Mim even got herself a t-shirt 'ignore your rights and they'll go away'. Viva NRA. We're so on board. How horrible is this? Don't know, but as a poster on the noticeboard sweetly said, the good guys come in here, the bad guys go to Harlem. What is it about violence that is just so relaxing? Mimi was positively mellow as we strolled back home, all loose limbed and tranquil. No points for guessing who's going back before the week is out.... what can I say, it's good for peace and harmony in the Guha household.