It is that time of the year again. For decades, Hyderabad has been proud host to an annual consumer exhibition called ‘Numaish’, which stretches over six weeks and includes a wide variety of stalls from all over the country — and is every shopper’s delight.

Visiting the exhibition is more than just going on a shopping spree, however. True, there are a couple of thousand stalls offering all manner of things imaginable: Clothes for all ages, linen, shoes, electronics, jewellery, bags, household items, dry fruits, furniture and food stalls that make you want to return again and again for the special dishes and special flavours that seem to be enhanced by the all-round atmosphere of bonhomie.

What is special about our Hyderabadi Numaish are the crowds, the movement, the choices, the general good humour and the feeling that for everyone it is their grand outing of the year. It doesn’t matter that the strolling crowds kick up clouds of dust and sometimes we have to wait in line at the more popular stalls. It doesn’t matter that the toy train that makes a round of the exhibition grounds has children and adults jostling to get on. It doesn’t matter that we can find kulfi (an Indian ice cream) and patthar ka gosht (mutton prepared on a stone) elsewhere in this interesting city. We still want to sample it at the exhibition — and we make sure that we do.

What’s more — and what probably appeals most to us — is that we can practice our bargaining skills here and thus we sometimes find ourselves the owners of items we really did not covet at all, but began bargaining for on a whim.

I made my first trip to the exhibition when we were a few weeks away from our wedding decades ago. As we looked around, we found all manner of things for the home we would be setting up, and we moved from stall to stall, picking up curtains, bedspreads, cushions and dishes.

Through the decades that followed, if we were in the city at this time of the year, we had to make a trip — or two or three — to the exhibition. While the man of the house spent long moments looking yearningly at television sets and computers, I stood fascinated in front of demonstrations of juicers and choppers and other kitchen implements that seemed to work like magic.

I was convinced that my time in the kitchen would be halved with those “tools” to dice and slice and quarter ... but of course, I learnt the hard way that those “magic” devices were not meant for my clumsy hands and somehow I took longer to get results with those choppers and squeezers than if I used a good old knife and a little brute force. But that didn’t stop me from getting another “upgraded” chopper/squeezer on our next visit — in the hope that this time I would be more dexterous and more capable.

In time, when our son was old enough to accompany us and young enough to delight in the colour and the confusion, we found stalls we hadn’t realised existed: Filled with soft toys, air-filled toys, wooden toys, pushing toys, pulling toys ...

Soon, of course, our home was full. We had everything we needed and we certainly didn’t need to go to the exhibition.

But did we stop? No.

When we made our annual expedition to the exhibition, we still spotted something fascinating, something we didn’t need but we couldn’t let go — and we bargained for it and bought it and kept it in a special gift cupboard to be presented to someone sometime who did need it.

The stalls change. We change. But somehow, we don’t seem to outgrow our fascination with the Numaish. Its charms just do not fade.

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.