In the eternal toss-up between brain and brawn, chess stands firmly on the side of the brain.
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Any sport in which Indians do well automatically zooms up the popularity charts. The logic is elementary. If this young man with chiselled face and Samson’s locks can throw a spear and find global glory, so can my Sadgopan. And if belting leather ball with wooden willow can lead to mind-boggling, mouth-watering fortunes, why should our children settle for meagre middle-class ambitions? Promptly then, eager beavers feel they are not performing their parental duty well enough unless they locate appropriate coaching facilities and force-fit another training session into the hapless child’s crammed timetable.
In all this, does the game with 64 squares find a place? Alas, chess players would call it a stalemate. We have in our midst serrated ranks of accomplished players – each of them an incipient world-beater. But no ticker-tape parade awaits them, no 24×7 cameras cover their every breath and no social media keep us updated on their weekend getaways and tells us what they had for breakfast. The inconvenient truth is that chess players are champions of a lesser god. Although the game is all about strategy, chess in India is clearly not making the right moves.
This game has everything going for it. In the eternal toss-up between brain and brawn, chess stands firmly on the side of the brain. It is also an equal opportunity sport, allowing for enough diversity and inclusion to get HR guys singing its praises. Ironically, though it deals with attack and defence, thrust and parry in one epic battle, chess is actually doing its bit for world peace. You don’t hurl a missile with the express, if unstated intent, to decapitate your opponent and you don’t get your nose broken in a scrum. All you do is push pieces on a patterned board. How saintly!
But don’t forget, we are living in the age of IPL which roughly translates into I Promote Legends. The way the game is being conducted currently, we are a long way off from attaining the status of legends. If you think it is high time chess got its due, the first things you need to do is to enlist the cheekiest cheerleaders in the land. At the next FIDE match, get them to inject life and colour by swishing pom poms and pirouetting daringly after every castle, every move.
The players themselves could lend a hand by being a bit more demonstrative. Sitting stoically in your seats as if waiting your turn at the dentist’s clinic impresses nobody. Instead, sledge your opponents with the ribald vocabulary of an Aussie who has just been hit over the fence. When you do get your opponent in a vice, punch the air, glare menacingly, and if you are in good voice, let loose a blood-curdling war whoop. Ah, that’s the way to prime-time glory!
Pay no heed to purists who will tell you that rules are sacrosanct. Nothing really is. Chess has already made plenty of allowances by accommodating faster variants such as blitz chess. If you can have blitz, why not glitz?
The Bard has said the course of true love never runs smooth. Well, neither does chess. There are infinite variations, unexpected twists, artful gambits and sudden deaths. While being unpredictable, there is yet an air of ultimate inevitability, for it all ends with what ought to be seen as a term of endearment: “Check mate”.
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