16-Feb 7:15PM to 18-Feb 4:30PM ::: Part 3 ::: Road side soda

Before we hit the main road from Pattamadai, it was nearly noon and we felt the need to quench our parched throats. We stopped at a local watering hole and asked for the variety on offer.

I noticed that the shop had quite a good stack of soft drinks. On closer observation, I saw that there was a green colored bottled which said "Citraa". I don't know if you people even remember that such a drink was once available in the market. And it was one of my favorite ones, until Fido Dido brought his drink to India.

So with a sort of happy and scared feeling I investigated the bottle some more and found that the cap had a whole lot of data printed on it. I certainly didn't remember seeing anything like that in the old Citraa and then it dawned on me that the print was of Tamizh characters.

Meanwhile, RG and Sathya were making enquiries with the suave shopkeeper and his friends (all dressed in dirty lungis and dirtier vests), about the availability of water and panneer soda. Only then was I able to link the 'information intensive bottle cap' on an old Citraa bottle and the contents inside.

Turned out it was new panneer soda in old bottle.

I let go of (is it of or off?) all my inhibitions and ordered a panneer s. When a limca bottle was handed to me, I found that the mouth had an abundance of ferrous (or probably ferric) oxide (again, i don't recollect if it was di or tri or just plain). So I asked for a straw and drank out of it.

But the soda was simply great. It gave so much pleasure that I decided to indulge in one more. And that too went down my throat in no time.

So, after an hour and more, we finally reached Paapanaasam dam.

There we had to wait for 5-10 minutes for a boat - the boat takes you from one end of the dam to the Baana Theertham Falls. The reason we had to wait was because, the boats are not permitted to ply, if the ticket guy doesn't see Rs.300/- in the collection box. The rate is Rs.20 per head and the boat can accommodate 15 people (excluding the boatman). But if there are only 10 people, he wont let the boat start. Probably the people would now have to shell out Rs.30 per head and then all is fine.

At the moment that we were ready, the boat was short of 3 people or in other words Rs.60. Even as we were discussing about sharing the 60 bucks with the 12 people available, 3 new faces popped up and so we got "sailing".