February 16, 1998

Pushy parents, a burst of talent, more sponsors and the dream of one day emulating Vishwanathan Anand add up to an upsurge of interest in the game.

By Binoo K John with M G Radhakrishnan

If you ask 10-year-old Koneru Humpy the subject in school which she likes most, she will say "Maths". Complex equations is what her dreams are made of. It showed last December when she won the under-10 world chess championship over 10 rounds in Cannes which called for rare powers of concentration and yes, a knack of throwing rapid-fire solutions to insurmountable positions on the board. Humpy placed herself on the under-10 championship throne which was occupied the previous year by Pentyla Harikrishna from her neighbouring district of Guntur in Andhra Pradesh.

Village names like Koneru and Pentyla are not just add-ons to the names of young chess players now dominating the Indian game -- they are also indications of a burgeoning interest in chess that is sweeping both rural and urban India. It's almost as if India is finally trying to recapture the glory of game which originated within its shores. Better still, a perfect role model is leading the way. Ask any pig-tailed, knee-high girl or grinning boy with braces why he's playing chess and in a collective squeak they answer: Vishwanathan Anand

"Anand is the single reason for the chess revolution in India," says Naseruddin Ghalib, former chess international. While India had less than 90 players with an international rating a decade ago, this year 370 out of the 20,000 players who are ranked worldwide are from India, which has displaced China (only 75 players in the list, compared to Russia's 1,696) as Asia's leading chess-playing country. "By the turn of the century India could have 1,000 ranked chess players," preens A.T. Ummer Koya, secretary of the All India Chess Federation. Fifteen years back India did not even have a Grandmaster; today, the country boasts three Grandmasters, 22 International Masters and 15 fide Masters. Not to forget two world champions in the under-10 age group, the Asian sub-junior champion and a horde of ambitious teenagers who talk of Garry Kasparov's opening moves in the same breath as they do of Chiranjeevi's movies. "The enthusiasm for chess in the country is unprecedented," says Manuel Aaron, India's first International Master.

That is for sure. A formidable array of chess players, egged on, interestingly, by their parents are discovering that chess can be a career alternative. Humpy's journey to the world title was planned out by her father Koneru Ashok, who gave up his job as a college lecturer to devote all his time to his daughter. "My father knows everything. I have learnt all my moves under his guidance," says Humpy.

Parents like Ashok -- and not an established system of clubs or state patronage -- are at the root of this chess resurgence in the country. If most other sport in India suffered due to the Indian middle class' perceived cynicism about outdoor activity, chess offered itself as the viable alternative; it calls for mental sharpness and formidable memory. A trophy in chess makes up for finishing only fifth in the Maths test.

Overall, most of the kids, and the parents behind them, are making the right moves. But long before parents in India started realising the potential of chess as a game for sharp minds, the foundations for a chess culture was already being laid by the chess clubs run by the Russian cultural centres in various cities. Calcutta's Alekhine Club, which was inaugurated in 1972, produced Grandmaster Dibyendu Barua apart from young stars like Suryasekhar Ganguly, the youngest male player in the world to have beaten a Grandmaster. There are 150 students taking chess lessons at the club every day for Rs 100 a month.

Chess clubs could be cheap but for parents who meticulously chart out the tortuous route to the coveted Grandmaster title for their children, the problem of finances remain. Though the chessboard comes cheap, the travel, the chess journals and the now mandatory laptop computer all cost money which few parents can afford. Yet, they persist and cut down on necessities to find money for their child's chess. "I must have spent about Rs 7 lakh for my son," says R. Krishan, whose son Sashikiran is edging close to India's third Grandmaster Pravin Thipsay's 2515 ELO points. Tamil Nadu's A.S. Subbaraman estimates that he spent about Rs 15 lakh over 15 years to train his daughter S. Vijayalekshmy It was worth all that money -- she is slated to become India's first Woman Grandmaster.

Pulling out all the stops to see their child become queens of the board is the in thing now. "Seventy-five per cent of our earnings have been spent on Tejas' chess," says Ahmedabad-based Kamini Bakre. "Though we are well-off, twice we had to take loans from my husband's provident fund account so that Tejas could travel abroad for tournaments," says the mother who quit her job as a computer programmer to travel with Tejas, the Asian sub-junior champion.

With chess becoming a national passion, private companies are stepping in to back the plethora of bright young chess stars. Humpy has been sponsored by her school Siddharth Residential School in Edupugally town of Krishna district. Tea major Goodricke of Calcutta sponsors players like Suryasekhar and Saheli Dhar-Barua, apart from running a chess academy which conducts tournaments. The Bhilwara Group has been sponsoring high-category tournaments in India. Indian Airlines has been helping Vijayalekshmy and Tejas. Fifteen-year-old Pallavi Shah of Kolhapur, who won last month's National Junior chess title, got Rs 2,500 per month for two years from the Union Bank of India. Krishnan has struck on an innovative way of cutting expenses while Sashikiran is playing abroad. He scans the Internet to dig out names of Tamil nris and sends out messages to them for help. A South African doctor and his Indian wife looked after Sashikiran and even cooked vegetarian food for him when he was playing in Winnipeg.

Beg, borrow, coax, bend five hours every day over that dismal looking black and white board peopled with pawns which can swallow kings, and then emerge with tears in your eyes ... it's worth going any distance to be a Grandmaster of chess. However, it perhaps cannot make up for lost childhood. Fifty-one-year-old Subbaraman, who relentlessly drove Vijayalekshmy today has tears in his eyes when he talks of how he pushed his daughter to the limits of human endurance. "One day, after five hours of continuous chess practice with me, Viji pleaded please appa, I do not want to learn anymore," he says. "I often feel guilty for having denied her childhood to her. But then I only wanted to make her a world champion." In a way he's right: only such relentless pursuit will create a wave of Indian champions.

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