In days of old, 45 lakh people visited Numaish and everyone but everyone went at least thrice. First to check it out, then to go shopping and finally to hang out and eat. Numaish was a piece of our lives and today?
First and foremost it was called the All India Industrial Exhibition and every big corporate in town took a stall and it was big. It had to win a prize and so stalls looked like Jurassic Park/ Titanic, what have you. It was every ad agency’s budget: at least a definite target to be reached.
Everyone vied to brand the train — a real train on tracks, not today’s train on tractor tyres!
The chaat stalls / the Agra Chaat, the cut mirchis, the Kashmiri stalls with shawls to walnuts, gadgets galore, shoes, slippers, bags, carpets, kurtas and the delectable Rajasthani saris — all now a thing of the past and replaced by more Luknowi stores than present in all of Lucknow. They say this of Black Label by the way, more BL in Hyderabad than produced in Scotland.
Even the kitchen gadgets that amazed one while in the shop and of course never worked once you got home, have been replaced by mugs and plates. In fact, one never understood why one waits the whole year, when the same stuff is in the by-lanes of Charminar.
Times have changed. There are exhibitions year around for the discerning female, multiplexes and malls everywhere and so actually apart from habit, why should one yearn for Numaish to roll in every winter. Why should the Numaish have the appeal of yesteryear?
Of course progress is in and why not? Why should kids have to play all day and find things to do to while away long summers? Today there is 24 by 7 TV channels to watch and if the programmes are not good there are always CDs and tapes to buy/rent/borrow and see.
If nothing else there’s Facebook and FB does not divulge the voyeur in you. You can be a silent predator in others lives and none the wiser.
You never need hear a child say, ‘I am bored; what shall I do?’
During a sales conference in Goa, (sales conferences are held during the monsoon to take advantage of the cut throat rates) one saw a poor harassed young mother with two small children who kept whining, ‘mommy mommy what shall we do?’ You see apart from the torrential rains the wi fi never works in Goa.
Maybe there are no nursery rhymes anymore? I heard about a little boy visiting with his parents and the hostess very kindly offered to play Preeti Sagar’s nursery rhymes to him and all he, of almost 4-years-old, did was to ask politely whether she had Meat Loaf instead? (Meat Loaf by the way is the name of a band)
So should the Numaish come re-packed to appeal to new tastes, is the real question.
Santha John is founder, director Coachlife. mail to santhajohn.coachlife.asia
