Hyderabad Exhibition (Numaish) turns 73!

 Zinda Tilismath Stall at the Exhibition

Young men ogling the pretty girls, hassled home makers haggling away to glory with the ever smiling shopkeepers, Hyderabadis enjoying biryani on the sprawling lawns are blissfully unaware of way they are helping the larger cause that the exhibition or the Numaish espouses.

The Hyderabad Exhibition had begun in 1938, when 100 Osmania University students had opened stalls in Public Gardens (since then the exhibition has been shifted to the large exhibition grounds in Nampally) for the purpose of promoting business and industrial exhibits in Hyderabad city.

In the seventies, eighties and nineties when there were no shopping malls and limited entertainment options, Hyderabad exhibition was the ultimate destination for local populations of Hyderabad and the surrounding districts. The onset of the New Year was welcomed with gusto and the citizens made a beeline to the exhibition grounds.

Since then exhibition has lost its sheen and the ongoing agitation of Telangana had meant that the crowds are thin this year. But to revisit the nostalgia there is no place like the Hyderabad exhibition. We children used to wait with baited breath as my father used to write out our name, parents names and ours addresses on small pieces of paper and place them  in our pockets (those were the days when there were no cell phones). We were severely warned not to stray away from our parents). The mournful wailing of the Hyderabad exhibition radio about lost children used to reinforce the strong tenet not to stray. The exhibition radio had very heavily Urdu accented announcers. The advertisements of Zinda Tilismath still rings in my ears.

We used to wander around wide eyed clutching the precious 10 or 20 rupees my parents had granted us. We used to debate as how to use the money. Should we buy something of permanent use or should the money be splurged it on mouth watering sweets and eats that were so beckoning?

We used to go from stall to stall always very careful not to step on the railway tracks on which the exhibition train ran.  Listen with rapt attention as the stall owners and sales people explained about products unimaginable and out of reach for most middle class Hyderabadis. As a youngster I remember listening very carefully to a sales man from Iran and casually asking the flabbergasted salesman if I could have  home delivery of two Iranian carpets costing a jaw drooping Rs 5,00,000/-. Just to put things in perspective I was earning a royal salary of Rs 1,800/- per month. The year -1988.

The stalls that were most popular were the once that were handing out freebie calendars.  Governmental agencies like Girijan cooperative society, APSRTC and others used the Hyderabad exhibition as the venue for giving publicity to their activities. Exhibition also was the place to get free medical checkup. 

The entertainment area was very popular and featured rides like the giant wheel. The eateries cost a bomb. One can hear the wails of hungry children being dragged away by reluctant parents. Parents who were shocked at the obscene high prices that the eateries were demanding.

All in all a fantastic experience only marred by the autorickshaw drivers extracting their pound of flesh (exorbitant auto fares sometimes four times the normal fare) from the already tired visitors. 

On the other side the Hyderabad exhibition society will spend 70 per cent of the Rs 14 crore it expects to earn from the sale of entry tickets each priced at Rs 10/- and by selling the space to traders through the 45-day event on furthering education and providing scholarships to students, mostly girls. The Hyderabad exhibition society helps 25,000 students this way every year.

The Andhra Pradesh government has extended the lease of the exhibition grounds to the society till 2052.The traders and exhibitors this year have put up more than 2,500 stalls, including those by traders from Pakistan, Iran and Bhutan.

Keeping pace with the changing times, the exhibition society plans to build a huge mall on the exhibition grounds. The society also plans to build three convention centres, two marriage halls to seat 5,000 and underground parking to accommodate 1,000 vehicles.

The Hyderabad Exhibition Society runs 18 colleges, including junior colleges and engineering colleges. 28 lakh students have been benefited by the efforts of the Exhibition Society which has spent about Rs 3,000 crore in its 71 year old history.

Touch screen Magic

There is a new item on the television channels about Hotels in Singapore that are offering a very unique feature in their menu rather on the table itself. The biggest problem about the  best hotel in the world is the huge crowd. The crowd adds to the ambience but mean slow service. 

Customers have two choices take it or leave it. Most customers stay back but the mood is gone by the time the food arrives. The solution - the Singapore hotels have hit it right on the head. Each table has a touch screen which is very user friendly. The entire menu is displayed. The interactiveness means that the customers can see the menu, select the items, and see the process of preparation of the dish.

Surprise of surprises the customer can have a conversation with the chef himself. Once the ordering is done one gets a message, at the table. One can even customize the food to his or her taste. This aspect becomes very important as many of us are allergic to many items. Readers would be surprised to know that many people are allergic to Peanuts. Yes you are reading it right, Peanuts or groundnuts as they are popularly called.

Touch screens also mean that table waiters can be eliminated. The sign at the delivery counter announced the number of the table once the food is prepared. The customer can go and pick up their order. Way to go Singapore hotels!

Book Review - How Starbucks saved my life - Part - III

But at various times Gill appears to be very naïve and pretending to be the most innocent person in the world. He does not appear to know the way the poor live in the USA and that for most people life itself is a struggle. For an advertising person who prides himself on being up to date about everything in life his naivety about the general things in life is a little too hard to believe.

Gill comes across as a person who tells a very gripping story about two giants in the USA, JWT and Starbucks. They are a study in contract. One is a huge advertising agency and the other is the brash confident newcomer from a new generation. The employees in JWT are painted in hues of black and grey where as the people at Starbucks are lily white. A little too hard to believe. And to say that Starbucks provides free health insurance for all its employees and gloat about it was too much of a syrupy gulab jammun to swallow.

Gill observations are insightful and are funny at times. His take on the late coming of Linda smacks of wit. He says quote” on the morning of our breakfast, Linda shows up late. Another bad sign. In corporate America the higher your status the tardier you are” unquote. And his take on every client becoming  an expert, two minutes after listening to advertising presentation is  a real one. As an ex advertising man myself I can vouch for the fact that in advertising business every client and his employees are experts. They are very knowledgeable and can take design and media plan decisions very easily and very casually. 

The real insight in the entire book is the working environment and the type of care that the author says Starbucks takes of its employees aka “partners” and its customers. Starbucks allows any one liberal use of its restrooms including people who are not its customers. This comes as a surprise as even the best malls and shopping complexes have not so clean bathrooms in India.

The work ethic of Starbucks is nicely detailed. The passion of Starbucks towards coffee is infectiously and one can almost feel aroma of the coffee coming out of the book!

Even though the book appears to be a pitch for Starbucks and its way of life it has many lessons for the managers to be. Of how the life can go from riches to riches and from riches to rags. Whatever one wants to say at the end “How Starbucks has saved my life” will remain as a motivational book about a person who lost is all and has rediscovered it. Not the discovery of material wealth but discovery of being happy with the work he did and does. That’s one takeaway I am going to cherish. 

Book Review - How Starbucks saved my life - Part - II

How he accepts the job and learns step by step and becomes a good employee is the rest of the story. His terror at handling the cash counter is graphically told. He is terrified of the cash counter. To avoid the cash counter he becomes the best toilet cleaner at Starbucks. He throws himself into work and becomes the proverbial funny guy. He is well liked by his colleagues and he learns to respect them as they are and not based on their qualifications or by fancy designations. At the end he touchingly describes how he likes his job at Starbucks better than the one at JWT. He feels more respected and more needed. Gill is finally at peace with himself. But he faces a new challenge. He would have to relocate and be a part of the Starbucks in his own locality. 

The beauty of this book lies in the fact that it bring to life the horror that many of us are pretending does not exist or that it will not happen to us – the fear of losing it all; that too when one is not in one’s prime youth. Losing a job in the late forties or early fifties. That is a stage when the employee slows down physically but is at the prime intellectually. He might not be looking young, fit and fresh but he has so much to offer. So should this axe called downsizing, right sizing or any other fancy term for denying someone his job, life and pride be wielded so mercilessly?

What happens to the employee when he loses his job? No one else wants him and it is a downhill slide from then on. But luckily in “How Starbucks saved my life” a way out is shown. Fictional and as clichéd as it sounds it is still a solution. Gill plots the story with fine acumen. But the frequent flashbacks to the past interrupt the flow of the narrative. But there are lots of lessons to learn. Lessons on how not to rest on one’s glory. Of how to recognize the danger signals of redundancy in the organization. Of being aware of what is fashionable and what is not fashionable.

The author seems to have a love-hate relationship with women. He appears to have very mixed feelings about them. He has stormy relationships with all of them including his wife, his mistress and his children. The only women with whom he has a normal working relationship is with Crystal his boss at Starbucks. I suspect that Gill has subordinated himself to Crystal as he was scared of losing his job.

Made in India!

The tags that come with products are great motivators. As children we were very excited about the tag made in USA. One of my friend cleared my mental cow webs. He said “Anil, USA does not mean United States of America. It simply means Ulaas Nagar Sindhi Association". Ulaas Nagar is a suburb near Mumbai and it is famed for making dirt cheap fake and spurious products. 

Made in USA or phoren (foreign) was so much in demand that I am reminded of a R.K.Laxman's joke. An ophthalmologist is examining a patient. He says “there is a foreign body in your eye. As it is a foreign body would you like to retain it?" 

Once all the industrialized countries in the world were debating as to which was the most industrially developed country in the world. They decided to hold a contest. As a part of that contest Japan made a fine platinum tube so fine that it took a microscope to see the fineness of design. Then the platinum tube was sent to Germany. Germans made a fine hole in the platinum tube. The Americans to whom the platinum tube was next sent to, made a nice jacket for the platinum tube. This jacket snuggly fitted the platinum tube. 

Finally the platinum tube was sent to India. The Indians were racking their brains to find out what could be done further. The Industries secretary came out with a bright idea “Let us simply carve the tag - Made in India on the platinum tube and send it". That is native Indian intelligence for you. India is a country where a pink liquid would be passed off as coca-cola and that to in a coca cola bottle. And surprisingly the perpetuators of this type of crime get away with it!