O P I N I O N S

Fifty Fifty
Is it the end of the ‘dhaba’ culture? Hope not
Kishwar Desai
A few years ago, my daughter along with a few members from her cycling club actually cycled down to Sonepat from Delhi, just to eat ‘paranthas’ at Gulshan ka Dhaba. This enthusiasm is unusual but perfectly understandable as the ‘dhaba’ is one of the few places which still maintains a high standard of stuffed ‘paranthas’, with mouth-watering milky white butter on the side, and thick yoghurt. The ‘lachedar paranthas’ are also standard bearers and unusually good, and crisp.

last word: Pankaj Advani
Four world titles make him the greatest
From billiards to snooker, and then back to billiards to win a clutch of world championships, this Bangalore lad has established beyond doubt he is master of the cue.
By Sabi Hussain
Pankaj Advani was barely 10 when he noticed that his elder brother, Dr Shree Advani, would vanish for a couple of hours every evening after school. On enquiring about Shree’s whereabouts from his mother, Kajal, he learnt that his brother was pursuing a new hobby called snooker. He joined Shree and his friends to unravel the mystery. For Pankaj, it was love at first sight. He was mesmerised by snooker, about how a cue was responsible for a ball to be accurately put away in a pocket.

ground zero
Can Modi make BJP the new Congress?
Raj Chengappa
On the campaign trail, Narendra Modi used technology as a force multiplier to get his image and message to every nook and computer in the country. After he was elected Prime Minister his team developed a hi-tech website on which people could easily connect to India’s Prime Sewak, as Modi calls himself. Now along with BJP president Amit Shah, Modi got the party to launch on November 1 a nationwide enrolment drive to rope in the proverbial ‘aam admi’ to be a member of the party.

Fifty Fifty
Is it the end of the ‘dhaba’ culture? Hope not
Kishwar Desai

A few years ago, my daughter along with a few members from her cycling club actually cycled down to Sonepat from Delhi, just to eat ‘paranthas’ at Gulshan ka Dhaba. This enthusiasm is unusual but perfectly understandable as the ‘dhaba’ is one of the few places which still maintains a high standard of stuffed ‘paranthas’, with mouth-watering milky white butter on the side, and thick yoghurt. The ‘lachedar paranthas’ are also standard bearers and unusually good, and crisp. Of course, one has to deal with the flies and the heat if sitting outside, but it is value for money as a group of four can have a hearty meal for less than Rs 600.

In the old days, our journey from Delhi into Punjab and Haryana was made of a sequence of ‘dhabas’ where we got piping hot fare. Of course, the standards of hygiene might have left much to be desired but it never deterred us from stopping at Jhilmil (near Karnal) or others. I still wonder how we did it, without the germ killing sprays and gels that we now carry around all the time. The toilets were also part of the larger adventure, full of stench and filth… and often the great outdoors was where we scrambled out looking for a convenient bush to duck behind.

Of course, I also remember the guesthouses which used to exist in Haryana, offering slightly more clean facilities and a selection of sandwiches and tea. But they too have been edged out.

This time round, driving on the national highway all the way to Jalandhar, we found that a class system has evolved, regarding the eateries en route. The ‘dhabas’ have been squeezed to the side of the highway, many struggling to retain some shape or form of their glorious past. What has replaced them is a string of McDonald’s and KFCs and Haldiram’s. And so all the truck drivers (and a few diehard ‘dhaba’ afficionado) head for the ‘dhabas’ while the rest dive into the cool and much more upmarket environs of McDonald’s or Haldiram’s, perhaps.

In fact, I found to my surprise, that one particular Haldiram’s has even been posted on Facebook because the toilets are so very clean! That makes sense today, because toilets have become part of our mainstream discourse, and so everyone is recommending that we should ‘use’ the facilities there. Incredibly it’s not the food which seems to be the main draw, though of course once you are in there, you would end up indulging! Undoubtedly, Haldiram’s and its western counterparts are now making travel easier, but I still think that if there was a plan to revive our local fast food, ie, the ‘dhabas’, it would have added piquancy to our travel. Was this completely impossible? Somehow, unfortunately, the ‘dhabas’ remain down market. Even the air-conditioned rooms that they offer cannot compete with those of the international chains. Surely, someone should have realised that they were a unique aspect of travel in Punjab and Haryana, and if the ‘dhabas’ disappeared, or became the preserve only of truck drivers, it would be an eventual loss—a part of our local culture would disappear.

On the other hand, one appreciates that KFCs et al are also providing a clean and healthy environment for young people to work in. Most of these chains have their in-house culture of politeness and all the staff is trained. Unlike the ‘dhabas’, where workers could only hope for a life of hard slog and uncertain employment, many of these established fast food chains take care to make their staff feel proud of their work environment, giving them standard salaries, and even a uniform, making them feel they belong to a global organisation!

Eventually this would mean that unlike the ‘dhabas’ where the employees would spend out their entire life probably in static, miserable circumstances, youngsters who join McDonald’s type of enterprise have a chance of even being transferred to other branches. Not only that, I found that this time, the staff in these chains (as they are competing with each other) are taking care to be extra courteous and making the frazzled traveller feel welcome. Some friends described how at a McDonald’s they stumbled and the entire order fell onto the floor. It was immediately replaced by the staff at no extra cost.

I have to say I still miss my ‘dhaba’ food, and that sharp piping hot, fresh authentic flavour. For me these new chains offer slightly ‘cardboard’ and artificial seeming cuisine. It is standardised to an extent that anywhere in the world we will get the same ‘big Mac’. But more importantly, these places are clean and offer dignity of labour to an aspirational India. If only we could have done the same by creating an international chain of ‘dhabas’!

last word: Pankaj Advani
Four world titles make him the greatest
From billiards to snooker, and then back to billiards to win a clutch of world championships, this Bangalore lad has established beyond doubt he is master of the cue.
By Sabi Hussain

Pankaj Advani was barely 10 when he noticed that his elder brother, Dr Shree Advani, would vanish for a couple of hours every evening after school. On enquiring about Shree’s whereabouts from his mother, Kajal, he learnt that his brother was pursuing a new hobby called snooker. He joined Shree and his friends to unravel the mystery. For Pankaj, it was love at first sight. He was mesmerised by snooker, about how a cue was responsible for a ball to be accurately put away in a pocket. After observing for a couple of weeks, Pankaj had his first shot at the sport. He got the pot right in the first attempt, and as they say, the rest is history.

Barely a year after starting in the sport, Advani made the final of the first tournament he played, the B.S. Sampath Snooker Tournament in Bangalore. His opponent in the final was a familiar face – big brother Shree, but it was the younger sibling who won. Advani continued his dream run of maiden appearances at the World Snooker Championship in China in 2003, where he defeated Pakistan’s Mohammed Saleh in the final. He then went on to win his first ever World Billiards Championship ‘Grand Double’ in Malta in 2005, when the dual formats were first introduced. Earlier this year, he again played in his first ever World 6-Red Snooker Championship and came home with the winner’s trophy.

To the world, Advani is known by many names – the ‘Unstoppable Man of Indian Cue Sports’, India’s ‘Golden Boy’, and India’s only ‘12-time World Champion’. But he is always going to be the little brother to Shree. Pankaj was only six when their father passed away. Since then, Shree has been a father figure to him.

Shree is a well-renowned sport psychologist, who has made a world of difference to our unique champion. Being a national-level billiards player himself makes Shree a professional with valuable experience. He has an impressive clientele among athletes, including the likes of Robin Uthappa (cricket), P.V. Sindhu and Parupalli Kashyap (badminton), and Arjun Maini (F1 hopeful).

In 2006, Shree flew up from Melbourne, where he was working as a corporate trainer in sales and life skills, to visit his mother and Pankaj in Bangalore. He noticed Pankaj was preparing hard for the Doha Asian Games, but felt something was lacking. He sat his younger sibling down and took him through some sessions of mental training. A week later, Pankaj won his maiden Asian Games gold and on return, dedicated the medal to his brother. That’s when Shree knew he was on to something. He went back to Australia, put in his papers, and came back to India to explore the field of sport psychology. Shree light-heartedly says, “I introduced Punks (Pankaj) to his career, and he to mine.”

The mind, according to Pankaj, is our greatest asset. It must be given attention to. Working on the body alone, be it technique or fitness, isn’t enough. If the mind is neglected, it will turn out to be our greatest hurdle at some point in one’s career. While snooker involves accuracy, billiards requires, in addition to accuracy, tons of endurance and prolonged spans of concentration. In the English snooker circuit, in which Pankaj spent two years, over 95 per cent players were Brits, the remaining from China, and a fistful from Europe and Australia. The locals in the UK have a clear advantage of playing many tournaments on home soil. Unlike badminton and tennis, even the qualifying rounds take place there. This means that all outsiders have to spend six-eight months, if not longer, away from home to compete with the Brits in their backyard. Billiards, on the other hand, has a fairer system with tournaments being conducted in all corners of the world.

Pankaj fulfilled his desire to compete in the UK circuit in 2012 and 2013, and has credited the rise in his level of game partly to that experience. After relinquishing his pro-snooker spot this year, Pankaj returned to billiards with a bang, winning all four world championships that he has participated in 2014.

The reason Pankaj has had a phenomenal year, arguably his best ever, is because he gave himself the chance to be available to represent India. After two years of snooker in the UK, Pankaj realised that he deeply missed billiards, home and playing for the country. When Pankaj was asked about the move from a snooker-only circuit, he said, “Billiards is my wife and snooker my mistress.” Even after winning the Snooker World title over a decade ago, Pankaj had admitted that he preferred billiards over snooker. This goes to show how passionate he was even back then about the mother game of cue sports. Eleven years later, he now owns 10 world titles in billiards and 2 in snooker.

India has a rich history in cue sports. Some of the best known billiards legends in the world – Wilson Jones, Om Agarwal, Michael Ferreira and Geet Sethi, to name a few – came from India. Pankaj Advani has not only kept the tradition going but has also carved out his own legacy. Advani’s astonishing four world titles this year have made him the greatest.