The milling crowds, the fairy lights of ferris wheel, the metallic whirr and roar inside the well of death, the wafting aroma of roasting corn, the sizzle of mirchi bhajji spell only one thing at the Numaish — money.
They spell big money for hundreds of families that look forward to the 46-day shopping fiesta known as the All India Industrial Exhibition at Nampally. Two years after the grim economic toll of COVID pandemic, there is a blur of maskless shoppers looking for bling and bargains, and shop owners hustling the crowds into their territory.
“There is a pent up demand. People are shopping with a vengeance. They want to be out and about in familiar surroundings. Our stall owners also know that and most of the stalls have opened up much earlier than the usual time,” says Ashwin Margam, vice-president of the exhibition society. At the exhibition society office, the stall owners jostle for passes and other sundry things creating a business-like hub-hub that was missing for the past two years. Earlier, stalls would open up only around Sankranti.
The fiery mirchi bhajji is perhaps the best bellwether of the health of Numaish. “I use 100 kgs of chillies to make the bhajji on regular days. On Saturdays and Sundays, it goes up to 200 kgs,” says Manik Rao, a master mirchi bhajji maker at one of the food stalls. A back of the envelope calculation (45 chillies per kg) shows that there would be a turnover of ₹1 lakh everyday and ₹2 lakh on weekends on just this one snack.
“Mirchi bhajji has been the one constant food item from our childhood when we used to visit this place accompanying my father to the office,” says Margam, a second generation member of the exhibition society that manages the affairs of Numaish, a fact testified by other members of the society also.
“There are about 2,400 stalls with about 1,100 applicants. These stalls are spread over 18.5 acres. Over the years, the platform has remained the same but the presentation has changed as the visitors have changed,” informs Mr. Margam, who remembers a time when there used to be a daily fire drill where a man would douse himself with petrol, light up and then jump into a pool of water at exactly 8 p.m. when almost all the visitors would surround the tank to watch the spectacle. Now, there are fire hydrants scattered all over the place, a grim reminder of the massive blaze that wrecked havoc three years back.
Earlier, there were banks of TVs for consumers to pick and choose. But those days are passé. “All the government departments used to have their own stalls, including the Jail department. We used to grudgingly follow our father into these stalls to buy towels and bedsheets, fertilizers from the Agriculture department, and honey from Forest department,” remembers another regular visitor.
Each stall is 120 square feet and the rent for the 46-day event is ₹75,000. Some stall holders take up multiple spaces and board them to create a new experience for visitors. Add the data about 2.5 million ticketed visitors and another 0.5 million having passes, the economic pull of the exhibition becomes easily apparent.
Beneath the soft exterior of nostalgia is this hardcore business agenda that the Numaish means for small family run businesses. And in the process of creating an economic fizz across the country, Numaish has met more than its goal when it was started.
Two-day event in 1938
It started as a two-day event from October 14-15, 1938, in Hyderabad, weeks after Adolf Hitler struck an agreement with Britain’s Neville Chamberlain over Sudetenland and the war clouds appeared to recede in Europe.
Speaking to the delegates of the sixth annual conference of Osmania graduates while inaugurating the Mulki Industries Exhibition at Public Gardens, Sir Akbar Hydari asked students to take up the task of national reconstruction. “Be prepared always to advance the interests of the State without any distinction of caste or creed and to leave no stone unturned to explore the economic resources,” said the prime minister.
The exhibition had 82 sections and was considered a success. Prior to the inaugural, the wary organisers of the exhibition had promised the exhibitors that their unsold goods will be transported back free over the Nizam’s State Railway. The success of the exhibition was the culmination of a nation-wide desire to help businesses, entrepreneurs, farmers and agriculturists break into the big league.
How does a predominantly agricultural society with handloom and paper industries create sufficient jobs and economic growth? Other States grappling with similar problems organised exhibitions in Nagpur, Allahabad, and Calcutta.
A colonial officer summed up the goals of a similar exhibition in 1909 Allahabad: “It should be planned with a view to show the products of agriculture and industry, arts and crafts in an intelligent and collected form and not merely to attract the casual sightseer. In other words, the aim of the exhibition should be to educate as well as entertain. It should really be a numaish ghar and not a tamasha ghar.” The Hyderabad Numaish too had cattle fair, dog show and a horticulture show that have now been hived off.
This stated goal of economic fillip has been more than achieved by Numaish as it now leaves an economic footprint across the country. Families from Kashmir to Punjab to Maharashtra hire apartments in Hyderabad to make a moolah. “We book our stock some 15 days before the exhibition. It takes about eight to 10 days for the trucks to reach Hyderabad. And we are the first ones to set up our stalls. We have hired an apartment in Malepally for two months and our family is here,” says Gowhar Shah, who has been a regular stall holder for the last 33 years. Some of them book stalls for next year’s exhibition, sure about the business potential.
Among the rows of stalls selling Lucknowi chikankari kurtas and dupattas and Kashmiri dry fruits is the Aurangabad Mills Emporium. “This factory was started by Hamid Ali Shah and we used to bring handloom cloth with zari for kurtas and sherwanis. Now, there are no nawabs and we use powerlooms and use the same design for bedsheets,” says Sabir Ali, who has been a regular at the exhibition for 53 years. The central part of the Exhibition Ground had a lake with boating facility in the 70s which was filled up to create more stalls as the demand increased for more space.
New transport choices
For the regulars of the exhibition, it is no longer waiting for the Numaish special TSRTC buses or asking the autoperson, “ Bhai Numaish chaltey?” You can step out of the Nampally Metro and access Gate no. 1 of Gandhi Bhavan Metro and access the Ajanta Gate. Crossing the turnstiles at the exhibition entrance after paying ₹40 per ticket brings you into a wonderland of timeless appeal of smells, sounds and sights. Among the sounds is the voice of the announcer in salty Dakhani about missing children or lost objects mingled with the classic Hindi numbers.
“Lata Mangeshkar and Rafi are my favourite. I began when there used to be LP records. Then came cassettes, CDs and now the songs are on USB drives. But the playlist is the same,” informs Ajay Kumar, who mans the radio station. Little wonder that the regular visitors even know the ordering of the songs as the playlist is rarely shuffled.
The announcements about careless parents losing children are by Ghousia Sultana who has been at it for the last 20 years. “The announcements about missing children have not declined even after so many years. While adults have cellphones, most children don’t carry them and they wander in search of anything that catches their fancy. And everyone knows where the exhibition radio is located and the children are brought here,” says Ravi Yadav who works with the exhibition society.
“We study here. We don’t have to bunk classes to come here,” says a girl student of Sarojini Naidu Maha Vidyalaya. But there are other students who refuse to talk and the reason is predictable. The Numaish is a bridge between the past and the present. One of the relics is the ‘women only’ days which used to be announced in advance so that women who observed strict purdah could do their shopping. Women ticket-sellers used to be hired for the event. Strangely, on women only days, the ticket rates were doubled from the regular one anna in the morning and two anna in the evening to four annas for women.
The Numaish brings out the quirky. “There is a band of determined Numaish goers who will not miss the event for the world. I have a relative who used to go to the exhibition after it closes down. She knew the deepest discounts were offered then,” says Raghu Kidambi, who has been going to the exhibition from 1950s and remembers hitting the food stalls first.
As families step away, they take with them memories and sometimes colourful toys like the yo-yo ball and the tick-tick trinkets they wished they didn’t buy.