TITLE TWO SWEET
Sujit Bhar
Posted online: Sunday, October 21, 2007
The two-time world champion is still humble enough to acknowledge that ideas of junior players…
Soon after their engagement, Viswanathan Anand went over to Aruna’s house one day, took out a chess board and proceeded to teach his soon-to-be wife the nuances of the 64 squares. Aruna didn’t quite move into the ethereal strata of Elo ratings, but the passion surely rubbed off. “Later, some of my relatives would challenge me to games, win, and say ‘Ah, I’ve beaten Anand’s wife’,” laughs Aruna.
It’s a question of perspective. A perspective that matured through the career of the two-time world champion, possibly the best sportsperson India has ever produced. Remember his match of wits versus Garry Kasparov atop New York’s World Trade Center in 1995? Anand lost that, and the 9/11 tragedy removed the brilliant edifice forever, but memories of those moves remain. That’s the perspective.
Anand had been an “amazing” GM then, experts would say, somewhat green for the rough and tumble of a hugely egoistic Kasparov, but definitely not a pushover. Graduating to becoming India’s first Grandmaster in 1987, he held his patience, measured his strides and remained focused. The fruits have come, twice over.
It’s been a while for Anand, there are greenhorns today challenging his supremacy, and things are coming full circle, so to say. “You know, John Nunn (English mathematician, Grandmaster, and once among the world’s top ten, senior in age to Anand) once told me ‘you need to beat these prodigies more than once in the early stages, that’s how they remember you, or they get onto you’,” says Anand. “I took that advice seriously and I have tried to not let the kids off too easily.” But they keep coming back, more of them, each smarter than the previous one. One day, knows Anand, one day.
But till that day, Anand is the undisputed world champion, one of only four to have broken the 2800 Elo rating mark — others, of course, are Kasparov (now removed from the rating list, because he has been inactive for a good length of time), Vladimir Kramnik of Russia and Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria — and one who has been among the top three in classical time control chess since 1997.
Chess isn’t all sport, it teaches you to live, to make the right choices, “to be able to make the right decisions in academics, and in every sphere of life, and to be focused.” It’s not Anand’s philosophy, but the plinth on which the game was built. There is an Indian version of the game — there should be, the game was invented here — where the moves are a trifle different from international standards, starting from the opening to the respective strengths of the Queen, but it is a time-consuming affair. “There is the need to spread the game deeper into the the country, a generally chess-literate country, and one can see the international version ingrained into soft, green minds. That’ll be a huge base,” he says. “It will help the all-round growth of the child, and give us more champions too.”
Here is the full story.
Did anyone ask sweet, humble Anand what he thinks of the dalits?
Do you mean a “humble” champion instead of a “humbling” champion? The meaning is very different.
Anand has so far distanced himself from Indian Politics and religious issues, so its best not to drag him into it.
I am sure Anand is not biased towards any caste or race as the first poster is implying, unless he can provide evidence to the contrary.
For someone who has been in the limelight for so long, one does not have to ask Anand such questions unless one wants to somehow get some sort of a response over such issues and then twist the response and drag him into complications. The entire city of madras came to a standstill when Anand came home. there are a good number of dalits there. The welcome would not have been so spontaneous and overwhelming had Anand not been the sort of person he is. Am sure had such a stupid question been posed to him, he would have blown it to smithereens or blocked it with some correct and logical reply, making the interviewer look like an idiot. Let us focus on the game instead of conjuring up hypothetical controversies.
” Did anyone ask sweet, humble Anand what he thinks of the dalits?”
What an inane question! I can well imagine the state of mind of the person who asked it! Anand respects his chess playing peers,does not cheat nor misbehave. What more can one ask of him?