Pujari, Inc., an Atlanta based non-profit organization that promotes the Asian Indian culture and heritage, organized the 2nd South Asian Doubles Tennis Tournament in September. 
Pujari started the tennis tournament last year – the inaugural tournament in 2003 drew large participation from the South Asian Indian community in metro Atlanta.
This year's event was a roaring success, and the participation went up by almost 50%. Pujari was fortunate this year to receive partial sponsorship from the ! Cable/HSI/Media giant, Comcast Corporation. In addition, Paige Miller, Director of Marketing for the Georgia section of USTA, and the local affiliate of The Tennis Channel (channel 127) were also generous enough to contribute towards the tournament in the form of goodies like T-shirts, sweat shirts, and other souvenirs. This year, twenty one teams participated in the tournament, which was held over two Sundays (Sep 19th and Sep 26th) at the East Roswell Park tennis facilities. 

        

The initial rounds were played in a partial round robin format on the first Sunday, while the quarterfinal, semifinal, and the final rounds were held on the following Sunday. The event was made particularly successful by the sporting spirit and enthusiastic participation of the players, the organizers, and their friends and families. The general quality of tennis in the tournament was excellent, thus clearly demonstrating the abundance of tennis talent in the metro Atlanta South Asian community.

The four semi-finalists were Soumen Ghosh / Rahul Basole and Siva Kumar / Thiru Chittireddy in one half, and Saravanan Pillai / Raghu Pani and Ashis Poddar / Ramji Veera in the other half. The final match played between Raghu Pani / Saravanan Pillai (Raghu was a member of the winning team in last year’s tournament) and Soumen Ghosh / Rahul Basole provided the audience with some great tennis to watch as well as cheer for the players. At the end, the defending champions prevailed, and won the match 6-4, 6-3. Pujari presented the champions and the finalists with trophies, cash prizes, and T-shirts. 

The efforts of this year’s organizing committee (Soumen Ghosh, Bhaskar Banerjee, Ashis Poddar, and Sudipto Ghose) and the support they received from the Pujari Officers made this fun event possible. Special thanks go to Debjyoti Roy for coordinating with the external Sponsors, and Samaresh Mukhopadhyay for providing Web support. With this kind of enthusiasm and positive feedback from the participants, Pujari is planning for an even bigger event next time….please stay tuned! A significant portion of the proceeds from this year’s tournament will go to charity.