Musings on Chaturanga           Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan

Musings on Chaturanga

Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan

 

 

 

 

For Charurang world of Chennai and India, Feb 24th 2022 is as important a day as 28th July,2022. And the Chennai Chess Olympiad’s mascot ‘Thambi’ could well have been Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. But, for the timely invasion of Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy’s Ukraine by the Russian President, the Olympiad would have never come to Chennai. And Chennai to showcase its Chaturanga capital status in just 5 months.

 

Chennai had joined the likes of Vienna and Salzburg and Varanasi having been included in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network for  its rich Margazhi musical tradition, in 2017. And The World Chess Championship 2013 was held  between the  reigning world champion Viswanathan Anand and challenger Magnus Carlsen, to determine the 2013 World Chess Champion. It was held from 7 to 25 November 2013 in Chennai, India, under the auspices of FIDE (the World Chess Federation).And I am not going where/who won the event. And I fondly recall watching the opening moves at the Hyatt Regency on Anna Salai. And now, all roads lead to Mamallapuram, the Pallava heritage site.And am thrilled to bits that Tamil Nadu is showcasing differently than its puerile politics,on your face cinema and inane serials of the crass genre, for once in a lifetime.

 

 

 

Early forms of chess originated in India around the 6th century AD. One ancestor was chaturanga, a popular four-player war game that prefigured several key aspects of modern chess. A form of chaturanga traveled to Persia, where the name of the “king” piece changed from the Sanskrit rajah to the Persian shah.

 

Who can forget this famous story handed down over the ages on ‘compounding effect’? There was once a king in India who was a big chess enthusiast and had the habit of challenging wise visitors to a game of chess. One day a traveling sage was challenged by the king. The sage having played this game all his life all the time with people all over the world gladly accepted the Kings challenge. To motivate his opponent the king offered any reward that the sage could name. The sage modestly asked just for a few grains of rice in the following manner: the king was to put a single grain of rice on the first chess square and double it on every consequent one. The king accepted the sage’s request.

 

 

 

 

Having lost the game and being a man of his word the king ordered a bag of rice to be brought to the chess board. Then he started placing rice grains according to the arrangement: 1 grain on the first square, 2 on the second, 4 on the third, 8 on the fourth and so on.

 

Following the exponential growth of the rice payment, the king quickly realized that he was unable to fulfill his promise because on the twentieth square the king would have had to put 1,000,000 grains of rice. On the fortieth square, the king would have had to put 1,000,000,000 grains of rice. And, finally, on the sixty-fourth square, the king would have had to put more than 18,000,000,000,000,000,000 grains of rice which is equal to about 210 billion tons and is allegedly sufficient to cover the whole territory of India with a meter thick layer of rice.

It was at that point that the sage told the king that he doesn’t have to pay the debt immediately but can do so over time. And so the sage became the wealthiest person in the world.

 

 

 

And for one who drew a game with then national champion and International Master Raja Ravisekar at the Tal Chess Club- it is nostalgic to recall on Tal Chess Club which  was born on 14 Aug 1972 in the Library of the House of Soviet Culture.It was to start it on 15 August- 50 years ago on 25th anniversary of our Independence, but the Soviets told Manuel Aaron, the pre eminent International Master, and the brain,body and bones behind its formation, that they cannot do it as it was a holiday! When this Club was born, the controversies surrounding the start of the 1972 Spassky-Fischer World Championship Match was hogging headlines.

 

 

 

 

 

In 2012 when Vishy Anand won his World Championship against Boris Gelfand in Moscow. The next day both the champion and his rival went to meet the Russian President Vladimir Putin. In their conversations, Vishy mentioned that he learnt chess at a Soviet Cultural Center called the Tal Chess Club. “So, we brought this upon ourselves,” replied Putin!

 

Today, Chennai boasts of 25 plus grandmasters and there wouldn’t be a single one who started playing chess in the 1980s who wouldn’t have benefited from the existence of the Tal Chess Club. Except me, of course! But how did it all begin? Let us get to few Bobby Fisher stories, as these Musings are always on the anecdotal plane. These musings  may last the longevity of this Chess Olympiad. Instead of Delete, those incensed by this invasion may choose to Resign please!

 

During a tournament in 1959, There was a power outage. All the electricity went out in the building. As you could imagine, everyone was in a state of chaos. After the emergency crews entered the building, the tournament director noticed something bizarre. A player was still sitting at a board, analyzing the position with total concentration. For those who have read Frank Brady’s ENDGAME: BOBBY FISCHER’S REMARKABLE RISE AND FALL – FROM AMERICA’S BRIGHTEST PRODIGY TO THE EDGE OF MADNESS – there is a wealth of material on the ordinary, normal, bizarre, weird, mercurial . What else do I do except borrowing? Nothing original, you see.

 

 

 

 

Just one more for now.In 1972,  Reykjavik, Iceland, Bobby Fischer met World Chess Champion Boris Spassky in an eagerly awaited championship match that made Fischer an international celebrity. While international chess had been dominated by the Soviet Union for three decades and was seen by the regime as an example of communist intellectual superiority, Fischer was outspoken in his criticism of Soviet players who he accused of deliberately drawing matches with each other. After officials refused his demands that they forbid all cameras and hold the match out of spectator sight, Fischer stunned the chess world by recklessly losing his first game and forfeiting his second one.

 

With the Championship itself hanging in the balance, Fischer was preparing to board a flight back to the US when he received communications from Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, among others, imploring him to continue. Spassky actually agreed to play Game 3 in a tiny backroom, and the match continued. Fischer won five and drew three of the next eight games and went on to a resounding 12.5 to 8.5 victory. He became the 13th world champion and the first American to win since 1886, but even that champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, was a naturalized Austrian. Fischer appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated and turned down numerous lucrative endorsements.

 

In 1975, Fischer refused to defend his title, and it was awarded to Russian Anatoli Karpov. And then it was passed on to Gary Kasparov, who today  has emigrated to US as a virulent critic of Vladimir Putin. How times change! Or do they, as time stands still,  as I cross the Russian Cultural Centre,on Kasturiranga Iyengar Road, Alwarpet, Chennai, after a morning constitutional  ( that inevitable law connect) with nostalgic memories triggering these musings, as I key in , at my customary,  not customised Maris Hotel Table on Cathedral Road, and another Chennai flavour, with a cup of hot Kumbakonam coffee!

 

 

 

 

How can I miss out on the Mahakavi Subramania Bharathiyar’s  opening and celebratory gambit  on the chess table or floor in Puducherry? Let us go there.

 

( Author of Chinnaswamy Subramania Bharathi – Musings,Anecdotes,Musings- to be published on Aug 15th,2022, Kalaimagal Publications)