KARACHI, June 22: The three-day All About Lifestyles Summer 2012 exhibition opened to huge crowds at the Expo Centre on Friday.

Everyone found much to their interest in one hall or the other. If juices, cold drinks, spices, cosmetics, cooking oil, biscuits, mangoes, oral care, hygiene and baby care products and medicines, pesticides, mineral water, sportswear, sports goods, furniture, electrical appliances, sweets, chocolates & candies, ketchup and countless other such items were of no interest to the visitors of the halls 1, 2 and 3, there were many other things in store for them in the halls 4, 5 and 6 as well as outside, where delightful fragrances beckoned one towards the food court.

With the upbeat music from the first three halls still reaching the ears, a little hop and turn from the first corridor took one to the halls number 4, 5 and 6, which opened the world of books, clothes, readymade garments, perfumes, shoes, bags, fashion accessories, handicrafts, textiles, curtains and upholstery stalls.

The main attraction in Hall 4 was the Books & Authors pavilion. Book lovers skimmed through their choice of reading selecting from religious, fiction, biographies, travelogues and children’s literature, besides scholastic and reference books.

Most females thronged Hall 5 where there was plenty of bargaining going on between them and stallholders offering clothes, perfumes, shoes, bags and handicrafts. The glittering imitation jewellery comprising earrings, bracelets, necklaces and lockets attracted teenage girls.

Hall 6 has the very interesting Kurrachee 2012 National Stamp Exhibition. The show organised by the Stamp Society of Pakistan in collaboration with the Pakistan Post, the Philatelic Federation of Pakistan and others comprises valuable and historic, public and private collections where visitors were also treated to traditional Sindhi music creating a relaxing ambience.

“I don’t specialise in any commemorative stamps but the regular ‘Series 16’ started by the Pakistan Post in 1994,” said president of the Philatelic Federation of Pakistan, S.M. Masud, who is a former federal law minister, present at the exhibition.

The series has stamps of all denominations starting from Re1 to the recent Rs30. Hence, over the years the ones with the value of Re1 to Rs7 have already been demonetised.

Among the rare ones in the collection that have become valuable due to their printing faults — such as colour distortion, omission of certain colours, jumping perforations, intaglio printing double, value shifts — is a very special stamp that has the value on it printed by hand. “A postmaster in Rawalpindi discovered to his surprise that the stamp was issued without a value printed on it. So in order to rectify that error, he wrote ‘Rs5’ by hand making it much more expensive than that amount,” said the collector.

Stamp Society of Pakistan chairman Iqbal Nanjee said that the entire stamp exhibition, which had been a regular feature of the All About Lifestyles since 2008, included local and foreign stamps. A row of round stamps issued from Bhutan, Qatar, Tonga, China, etc were also on display as were the oldest overprinted stamps, postcards and stationary of Pakistan. “These were the ones issued by Indian states and which we overprinted to make our own soon after the Partition in 1947,” he said.

Pakistan’s only gold stamp of Quaid-i-Azam’s profile, which got printed from France in 1976 on his birth centenary, was also a part of the collection.

The afternoon also saw the holding of an art competition for children in two age groups: 7-10 years and 11-17 years.

“The competition will be judged by well-known stamp designer Adil Salahuddin. Artwork of the best four from each group will be printed as stamps next year,” said Mr Nanjee.