Sania loses biryani and Barista visits to tennis

New Delhi: No more biryani and no more visits to Barista for leisurely chats over coffee — just some of the sacrifices India’s tennis ace Sania Mirza has made to concentrate on her game.

The 18-year-old, who recently became the first Indian woman to enter the fourth round of the US Open, has also cut down on sweets, at least during the international season. While biryani, the world famous rice preparation from Sania’s hometown Hyderabad, and sweets have been discontinued for fitness reasons, visits to coffee shops and markets have stopped for security reasons.

Does Sania have a sweet tooth? “She does, but not during the season. There is no question about it. She has reached a different level; it is not the juniors anymore. She knows that. She is very careful what she eats now,” said Anirban Das Blah, vice-president of Globosport, the company that manages Sania.

With success, Sania’s security has become a cause for concern for everyone. “She has a bodyguard now at all times wherever she goes out. She doesn’t go out much anyway,” Blah said “Everything she does is very controlled and monitored, unless she is with friends. She doesn’t go to Barista, for example, the way she used to.”

According to Blah, Sania, who is playing the $225,000 Wismilak International in Bali, Indonesia, starting Monday, is paying the price of being a celebrity. “It’s very hard for her to live a normal teenaged life and I think we have to be a lot, lot more careful,” he said.

Being a young girl has not helped Sania’s cause. Somebody recently created a website blog with nasty messages posted on it, and globosport clamped down. “We issued a legal notice and we got the website shut down, absolutely,” said Blah. “We have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to her security. It’s a very dangerous thing,” he stressed.

“We live in a celebrity obsessed age and a celebrity obsessed culture. And she seems to have captured people’s imagination the way few people have. Being a girl, it’s a very risky situation to be in, so we are very, very careful.”

Blah admitted that she could not be put in a glasshouse. “She has to have normality as well. It’s tough but we are trying to do the best we can.” What helped was that Sania was essentially a homebody. “She spends more time at home than anywhere else. But this is also what she has grown up with... She comes from a conservative family, and she doesn’t do the things that a lot of other kids from other cities do,” he said.

The young star, who won the Wimbledon junior girls’ doubles in 2003, has come in for considerable criticism for her attire from conservative elements in the community.

“A T-shirt is a T-shirt. She is not a spokesperson for a generation or a religion or her age group or for women in India. She is a tennis player. People sometimes lose sight of that,” Blah