Saturday 15 July 2017

Hectic day in Panipat part2

The Director of Doubleroo Chess Academy Panipat, Gaurav Chhabra, founded a company, www.makeinindia.net.au, ( email gc@makeinindia.net.au ) that brings together retailers from around the world with manufacturers in India. After our Seminar we visited one of the factories.

 The bag featured at the end of part one was made in Panipat by RVcollection, a company that can make virtually anything as I'll show you below. Mr Pradeep gifted it to me upon hearing the sad story of how my passport pouch mysteriously disappeared from my room in Delhi. 

The bright side, now I can carry my Samsung tablet, my phone and my passport all in one bag. Ideal for travelling.


Including this seat which caught my eye immediately. 


Bags are their speciality. They make them to order for retailers the world over including the USA and Europe. Now they are looking to expand to Australia with an order currently in  production.


Lots of bums required around here. Lucky we came 😂


Pradeep showing off his wine coolers. 

Mr Pradeep Kumal
Raj and Gaurav showing off a bag that's bound for the US. Can you tell?
Note the t-shirt :-)

Mr Raj Kumar Mr Gaurav Chhabra
The workstations where the real heroes turn cotton, leather, silk, hemp and all other materials known to man into anything one can imagine.


All meetings, conferences and seminars end the same way in India. With food of course. We received a call ordering us home, where Gaurav's mother's and wife, amongst others, had spent many hours slaving over a hot tandoor to make us a delicious Linner (meal between lunch and dinner).


It was our fourth meal of the day and the sun was still up.


Two types of Roti, two salads, three curries, three pickles, including my favourite, chilli, yogurt and all topped up as soon as a dent had been made.


After a few hours Raj and Pradeep made their way home, presumably for the dinner their wives had made, and our possy went to town for first sweets. I had to try the local Kulfi 😉

Between meals we made a stop at a very talented six year olds place, a young prodigy Gaurav has been teaching. His name is Sambhav. You'll hear it again in the years to come.


He had been taught properly, the Doubleroo way 😉, developing all his pieces, castling and fighting for the centre. This young man also has qualities that can't be taught, like being suspicious. He never took material without checking if there was a trap, something some of my older, much stronger students still haven't fully developed. I won't mention them by name, they know who they are 😂

He could have played all night but after more than an hour we left him with a difficult pawn ending and headed to our next appointment. Yep, you guessed it, second dessert.


We ended up at Rajat Chanana's place, a fellow chess enthusiast and friend of Gaurav's. 


By this time however, we were all bursting at the seams to the five of us shared three desserts. We got home just after midnight. Work had not quite finished yet and now Gaurav and I spent a good hour working on the Doubleroo curriculum. We finished well after 2am with the intention of going to a special breakfast place at 7am. Not surprisingly we all slept in.

Gaurav's mother Sharda, wife Sumiti, nieces Mishika and Janisha, and sister in law Sheetal.

Yesterday morning after breakfast it was time to say our goodbyes with a photo. The ladies of the house had spent all their time tending to our every whim and I have to say I felt slightly guilty not helping in any way. I was promised that next time I'll be allowed to do some cooking. And washing up? We'll see ☺

Gaurav was also answering calls from schools and students from across Haryana state for seminars and lessons after the Commonwealth. Chess is very popular in India and the chess in schools initiative by the Haryana chess association cannot begin to meet the demand. I hope to return at the end of the year to help out.

Doubleroo has also ordered some of those t-shirts we wore to the seminar and other chess paraphernalia. Panipat is a real manufacturing hub and the skilled tradesmen here can make anything out of any material so if there is something you have always wanted made but didn't know how to go about it just email Gaurav.

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