Raj to Riches

Growing up in West London, Hundal credits cue sports as a positive force that kept him out of trouble. (Photo by Lawrence Lustig)

While both his parents were born in Punjab, India - his dad arrived in the U.K. at the age of 3, his mom at 17 - Raj was born and raised in the harsh West London borough of Hounslow, known mostly for its scarily-high crime rate. Stabbings, shootings, robberies, and the like. Liquor stores could be found in every direction, and one of its most famous spots was, of all things, a weapons shop that Hundal is certain was - and still is - under constant police surveillance.

Hundal wrote to me on Facebook of his dark life as a kid in Hounslow, a place where he concedes he ran with a bad crowd, where he was once jumped by a gang of 15 kids and where, for protection, he felt the need at times to carry a knife: "My whole neighborhood was dirty, rough, and very dangerous, especially at night. … Police are everywhere (they have to guard the subways on a 24/7 watch). … It's the kind of town where, when you're young, you have to learn to throw punches back when you're being hit, or you will be bullied for the rest of your life. … Growing up I used to fight all the time in school, … coz I had to. … Me and my friends had to earn our respect in my neighborhood growing up. … There are only five of us that remain to this day, and we're as close as brothers. … We've been through everything together. … There was and still is a big crack and heroin problem in my town. … We lost so many friends to it ... through overdosing, or just being a junkie, or committing robberies and getting sent to prison. … I once even had to tell my friend's mum and dad to take him to rehab or he was finished (dead) in the next few years. … It was hard to do, … but he is fine today and doing well. … Some of my close friends soldiered it and went cold turkey and are good today, … but along with all this came lots of unnecessary problems, ... fighting others over money that had nothing to do with me really, but because it was my boys in trouble I'd get involved. … The only thing that kept me away from the drugs and crimes was cue sports and a passion to be successful and my family values. … Thank God."

Raj (which translates into the "king") is the eldest of two boys. His dad worked his way up in British Airways from a baggage handler to a manager. "My dad worked so much when I was a kid - 16-hour shifts - I didn't even see him sometimes," Hundal remembers. His mom is a housewife who, for a time, cooked ("She's an awesome cook," he says) for his aunt's restaurant. Together, along with relatives from two other families, they lived in a modest two-story house.

He was, as he puts it with a bad-boy chuckle, "a naughty boy" in school, a class-clown of a kid with a short attention span who'd frequently end up either in detention or eyeball-to-eyeball with the principal. "Young and hard-headed," he explains. "I think I'm a good kid, but let's just say I have a problem with authority."

He was a tyke of 6 when he began toying around with snooker on a small 3-by-6 foot table in the back of his aunt's restaurant. "I was too young to be left alone," he says, "so I played snooker in that restaurant every day." When his father saw that his boy had a natural talent for the game - Raj could not only beat his cousins but his uncles as well - he took his 8-year-old to the local snooker room to play on the 6-by-12 footers.

"I was way too short to play, eye level to the rail," Hundal remembers, "so I dragged around a foot-high beer crate to stand on, jumping on and off the thing for every shot."

He ran his first century break when he was just 13 (a 123 after missing a brown, easily topping his father's high run of 89), ultimately became the U.K.'s top junior snooker player, but weirdly never turned pro. Why? "Because I was an idiot," he says matter-of-factly. "I could sit around here and give you 101 excuses. But then I'd just be lying, which is not my thing. I was very stupid, never applied myself like I should have."

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