The bill had a lot of items listed one after the other, with the price for each marked against it. I guess that's what a bill is supposed to look like, but I am clarifying it, just in case you have any doubts.
But the most important number in that bill was at the bottom (duh!) and it was 695.00. Yes. Almost 700 bucks for 9 archanai thattu saamaan. Apart from the usual stuff in such thattus, let me list out the special items for V.Kovil:
1. a piece of jaggery each, for the 3 of us. hardly 10gms i think.
2. 2 pieces of red cloth. quality of the material? u know the blue cloth we use for car cleaning. exact same material, just the color was different.
3. 3 small garlands. no fancy flowers in them. just regular white and green garland.
4. 3 sets of salt and pepper packets. barely a handful in each.
5. 5 neiy villaku. each costs 5 rupees in Besant Nagar temple.
So these f*ers were obviously trying to steal us. We might as well have had our car stopped on the way by highway robbers and still spent less!
Since we didn't have that much cash on hand, and since these vultures started crowding around us, our survival instincts got the better of us. We started arguing with the buggers.
There was nothing special in the arguments actually. I did start off disputing some of the items he had listed. Those were the things he hadn't supplied. My mother was obviously able to question the rates of the garlands et al. There was lot of back and forth talk and those guys actually said that they had missed out to include some other items and if they add those, it would come to 750 rupees.
The guys on the opposite side were mainly 3 in number. The first guy who lead us into the temple and the other guy who filled in for him inside. The third guy had come in only for settlement.
In the whole fight that was taking place, my mother dealt what I consider to be the master stroke. She went on questioning why this 3rd guy was there in the whole discussion. She demanded that he vacate the place and that she would talk only to the 2 guys we had interacted with.
Even if I had argued with those guys in full blast, I wouldn't have had the presence of mind to reduce the strength of the opponent. That move really helped us. We now had to deal with only 2 guys and obviously it strengthened us.
They tried an emotional blackmail that they didn't want even one paisa and we retorted that we would rather put the whole 700 bucks in the hundial than give it to them. But we also told them very clearly that we were willing to settle for Rs.400 only and that too only because we made the mistake of not asking them for the price up-front.
That's all the cash we had loosely on hand. My father was carrying some 2K in a big wallet. But in all our visible money holders, we barely had Rs.400. We gave it to them making it very clear that we really didn't have the cash.
My mother's argument and the fact that we didn't have visible cash on us, kinda helped and the lepers went away with the money.
We then set off to Hotel Sadhabishekam for breakfast. Surprisingly, their kitchen closes by 9.30 AM for breakfast and they reopen only around 11.30 for lunch. It was 9.40 when we reached there and so we missed out on what is considered to be good food in that neighborhood.
We couldn't find any other good restaurant in that area and headed back to our Hotel in Sirkazhi. A few 100 metres before our hotel, we saw a decent looking joint named Vasantha Bhavan and ate there. The stuff was really good.
After that, we returned to the Hotel and there it was pack-up time.
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