Saturday, February 5, 2011

Numaishhh...ye to har hyderabadi janta hi!

The host of this Numaish is the lavish ground of Kamala Nehru Polytechnic and Vanita Maha Vidyala, this historical and entertaining event opens to public from 1st Jan to 15th Feb of every year. This All India Industrial Exhibition is known to be the biggest in the country with more than 2500 shops, is the place for most common things to a variety of things which we do not see them in any regular shopping places. The list include readymade garments, bedspreads, crafts, kitchenware, spicies, handy crafts, decorative items, fancy items, home appliances and house hold items. You will see most of the government department stalls with the display of information about their programs (as they claim) they offer to the public of AP.
We normally visit Numaish on 19th of Jan every year as this has some significance to us but we visited on 29th of Jan this year. It is always good to be at the venue by 4:00 Pm as you will easily get parking and there won’t be much crowd. Being winter the nights get colder so it is better to finish it before 9:00 PM to avoid the dust and cold.
The first surprise this year is the car parking charge at Rs. 80/- and the second being Rs. 20/- for entry ticket. The second one did not bother us much as the proceedings from this goes to the society which is supporting 18 different educational institutes in and around Hyderabad. We entered with lots of enthu this year as we have special list of items to purchase. Rohit picked up few bags of popcorn for keeping himself busy for the next 5 hours...of course some cola and ice-cream is also there in the list for him.
The other big thing in the exhibition is the amusement part; you have whole variety of rides which gives kids, adults a lot of thrilling experience. Never tried them in the past visits because Rohit was afraid of them and there used to be a huge crowd but this time our naughty ‘buks’ showed lot of enthu in getting into many of the rides alone...of course the ticket charge will make you think if you want your whole family to get into...;-).  That being the first hour we are the first ones at every ride. Some where Rohit saw the giant wheel is biggest in AP so i also got some enthu in getting onto giant wheel. We could see good portion of Hyderabad, a glimpse of Charminar, High Court and Macca Maszid from the top.
As we got down we just found another Charminar at the bottom...don’t be shocked for not knowing about this second one, this is build by emperor Zinda Tilismath for hosting their great old sarva roga nivarini(one medicine for all diseases). Being a Hyderabadi, felt ashamed if we don’t have Zinda Tilismath at home, so bought one. Gussa mat karo, I know theesra Charminar is at hi-tech city.
More than 50% of the stalls are for either readymade garments or bed sheets. Every time our shopping list includes bed sheets as you find variety of them from all corners of India at a very reasonable price. We felt the price this time will be higher due to ever increasing inflation but for our surprise they were low...of course at the cost of quality, so dropped them from the list.
Four our surprise we did not find stalls from electronic giants like TMC, Samsung, LG, Sony etc., this time, where we can have a glimpse of new electronic products, so felt little disappointed. However our legs are moving forward with full enthu as the software folks rarely give work to them…
Rohit is eagerly waiting for a bicycle shop to have a glimpse of his dream machine which he is going to get for his next birthday. This time his brand is Hercules, he found the ship in no time. Our question bank started asking yes/no questions; fill up the blanks and multiple choice questions to find all the information he wanted. Now, he has all he wanted about his next bike and just waiting for 3rd class final exams to over.
It is almost 3 hours past and our engine gave a reserve indicator asking us to refill. As we moved little further found lot of chat, chai, north, south, telengana, Andhra food stalls..of course seema food varieties also, all at five star prices. Your pocket warns and your engine wants. One thing I never miss to have in the Numaish is the Junnu(special  variety cheese made of milk in villages) which you get in dwakra bazar.
As we crossed this area, found lot of dry fruit stalls where there are numerous varieties of dry fruits in every stall. In general you need to have good bargaining skills (kanjush mentality..as if you don’t need them). You should start at 30% to 40% of the price the vendor quotes. If you feel shy, you will end up paying double the price. Never buy packed dry fruits as they will be very old, looks good from outside tastes bad...yah! This is from my experiments with truth....:-)
Time for another round of fuel filling before you get out of the mela...finally had kichidi and buttermilk as our dinner before our wheels signalled us saying enough of it and first couple of the family warned us saying time to get home.

While on the way home, along with all other nonsense stuff, we were just discussing the days when this is the only exhibition in Hyderabad,  and that to once in a year, it used to be a remembering thing for whole year. But with the rapid growth of the city in the past decade, other places emerged like  our great shopping malls, Shilparamam, Hitex, peoples plaza and Nizam college grounds where you see variety of exhibitions and genuine discount sale happening year round. Here you don’t need any bargaining skills but you should listen to your high command otherwise you will never be able to close your account with Mr. Kubera(your credit card company)...ye bakwas bund kar...got it...;-) For amusement you have film city, mount opera, ocean park, Jal Vihar, NTR Gardens, Lumbini Park, Necklace Road. The parking at these places is reasonable and they are in the serene locations....don’t take me wrong, ï know yaro hamara laskar may konsa bhi galli may jao, apko circus dikayega hamara cab and auto driver bhaio”, i am just comparing with Nampally.
Let me end it here as we reached home...time to wind up the day and get charged for our company annual day the next morning.... good nights!!!