| "Since you are going to lord around Pragati Maidan, the least you can do is buy me my annual quota of spices and your niece her wedding gift," said my wife, who has been a regular at the annual India International Trade Fair jamboree for as long as I can remember. "Darling," I replied "" for despite people thinking otherwise, I am fond of my wife "" "I am not going to Pragati Maidan on a shopping expedition. I am," I said, lest she think it was a junket, "part of a jury that has been assigned an important task." |
| "Yes, yes, I know all that," she said, waving her hand, "you will be choosing the best stalls at the fair, though why they have asked you, who knows nothing about them, and not me, seeing as how I go there every November, I don't know..." she trailed off. "Anyway, since you will be there, the least you can do is my shopping according to my list," pointing to a piece of paper that seemed to have everything from star aniseed from Kerala to rubies from the Burmese stall scribbled across it. |
| I gave her a spiel about how members of a jury have a responsibility that must not be swayed by personal choices, that we could not show our biases, and that we must desist at all costs from shopping while in the company of other jury members and officials of the trade promotion organisation, lest we hold them up. I might just as well have saved myself the trouble because barely had we begun the task of jurying when the painter amidst us fell victim to the silk sarees of Madhya Pradesh and was soon walking about with his bulky purchases; the bureaucrat picked up beads and baubles from as many stalls as happened to catch his attention; and the trader haggled over the price of Pakistani onyx grapes. |
| It might have been less embarrassing if the stall directors had not appeared as if from thin air, carrying with them many, many bouquets of flowers, and packets filled with kilos of information on industry and policy and revenue and net worth and other such things never meant to be read. Officials arrived to brief us on fisheries and animal husbandry, agriculture, horticulture and sericulture, till I was so muddled I could no longer tell an apiary from an aviary. |
| For the uninitiated, Pragati Maidan sprawls over one of the largest acreages in New Delhi, and even though we had a trolley with "Jury" posted proudly across the windshield to whisk us importantly from one hall to another, it was under extreme circumstances, dogged by officials and bureaucrats and, for good measure, a good deal of the public in Pragati Maidan as well who seemed to think it a jolly good thing, across vast halls and over ramps and down stairs. |
| Over two hectic mornings and a good chunk of the afternoons as well, we trudged and listened and asked and noted down our observations till it was time to draw conclusions. Which was easier said than done. You surely had to love those dry flowers and glass thingumjigees from a south-east Asian country! How could you ignore the fabulous shopping from India's handicrafts state, so what if it had nothing to do with the year's theme on agriculture and agro-products? |
| "I hope you at least got me some gate passes," said my wife when I turned up empty-handed at home. "It is a very tiring assignment to be part of a jury," I explained to her. "Well, I am glad you do not wish to repeat this foolishness," she nodded sympathetically. "But you are wrong," I told her, "only next time I would like to be a judge at a beauty contest." |
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