Rook-ja nahin tu kahin haarke

Every Indian chess player dreamt of winning the team gold medal in the Chess Olympiad some time for the past five decades It has been a dream of the larger chess fraternity too The dream has come true in Budapest HungaryViswanath Anandrsquos world junior win in 1987 was an epic moment We then had a bronze medal in the menrsquos Chess Olympiad in 2014 and then 2022 The womenrsquos team won a bronze in 2022 Like they say Bhagwan jab deta hai toh chappar faad ke deta hai India got two golds in the Open Olympiad and the womenrsquos Olympiad We need to trace the trajectory of the journey and how it led India there As the saying goes Rome was not built in a day Similarly this empire of Indian chess was not built in one day one year or even a decadeAwareness boomRewind to the early 1970s when there was a spike in chess awareness because of the historic Boris SpasskyBobby Fischer match This was an exciting break from the familiar USSR Vs USSR World Championship matches However in 1970 when it became clear that Bobby Fischer an American was going to challenge a Russian Boris Spassky there was obviously a lot of interest in the West with the Western press amplifying the excitement The chess world was watching on the edge of their seatsDesi interestIndia too was caught up in the whirlwind The Indian game of chess was already being played in over 100 countries in those days and the FischerSpassky match was keenly watched all over India The Marathi press was at the forefront fuelling this as there has been a strong chess tradition in MaharashtraIn the 70s there was a big boom and almost every youth started following or playing chess In those days Mumbai was on a roll dominating Indian chess Out of the top 14 national players there used to be seveneight from Maharashtra and at least fivesix from Mumbai Though the performance of the Indian teams in the Olympiad in the 1950s and 1960s wasnrsquot really inspiring the dedication of top Indian players was As a result in the 1970s and lsquo80s Indian players started winning medals in Asian and Commonwealth championships This gradually improved their results in the Olympiads tooThe first national championship was won by Mumbaikar R B Sapre way back in 1955 In subsequent Olympiads Shrikrishna Sakhalkar and particularly R B Sapre from Mumbai played a very important role Indian chess was at an elementary stage with only one International Master and nobody in sight for the title of GrandmasterAsian eyeWhen I got the bronze medal in 1977 at the Asian juniors India started doing reasonably well In 1983 the Asian Team Championship was held in Delhi The Indian team got the bronze medal I won individual gold on the second board in the Asian Team Championship China was stronger at that time and it got the gold while the Philippines got the silverIn 1985 when I won the Commonwealth championship it came as a great surprisePeak timeIn the 1970s it was Mumbai flourishing in chess There were a lot of important tournaments conducted As a teenager I was able to play and get exposure to a tournament which had four national champions playing including the thenreigning national champion Manuel Aaron That was a great opportunity as I was only 16 at that time and this was made possible only because it was an open tournament with a good cash prize which attracted all these big names When I won this it became a cherished moment for Mumbai chess In the lsquo80s we Mumbaikars had more than one player in the Indian team almost all the time Maharashtra had won the national championship 11 times with Mumbai winning it nine times out of these 11 Mumbai had always been a leading chess city till eventually Chennai overtook us In the womenrsquos it was absolute domination of Mumbai The first 20 national championships saw 19 winners from Mumbai My wife Bhagyashree was originally from Sangli but had moved to Mumbai in 1983 so she was a Mumbaikar when she won her first national championship in 1984The Asian Chess Championship womenrsquos was won by Mumbai players from 1978 till 1995 This was a very long reign which eventually the Chinese took over We had different cities producing great players like Koneru Humpy S VijayalakshmiZandu zindabadWhen Mumbai chess really flourished in the 1970s and 1980s it was mainly due to the contribution by Zandu Pharmaceutical Works which offered their canteen for a chess club free of cost This was where top Mumbai players congregated to play The humble canteen was the heartbeat of city chess The chess discussions were with contemporaries elderly players and eventually with youngsters Get the games of the top players in the world analyse them in depth discuss themThis really created a robust chess culture So seminal was this canteen club on the chess landscape of the city that there was also a saying lsquoOne who came to Zandu would always be able to beat those who never visited itrsquo Then unfortunately Zandu sold their company and the chess club stopped Since then for the last 25 to 30 years we have no chessplaying club in MumbaiThink throughAll you can do is approach some players who are willing to train you for high fees But whatrsquos the use of training without actual practical participation The most important thing in chess is to think independently Independent thinking can happen only when therersquos a group discussion and not onesided monotonous coaching A champion can be created only when a player develops the ability to think independentlyI remember the days when Ramchandra Sapreji and Shrikrishna Sakhalkarji invited suggestions of moves from all of us youngsters When we suggested wrong moves we were also made fun of but were immediately told why our opinion was wrong Mumbairsquos glory has now passed After my younger brother Satish became national subjunior champion in 1976 it took Mumbai 32 years to achieve the same feat when Aditya Udeshi won in 2008Similarly after I became the first Grandmaster in 1997 it took two decades for Mumbai to have the second Aditya Mittal We still have only two nowThat is the state of Mumbai chess We need a transformation Interactions are the lifeline of the game We also need to monitor the performance of the children which means parents not being simply happy about their child doing better than the neighbourrsquos child but going beyond that if there is significant improvement in playing strength As we celebrate a stirring sterling win let us move towards Mumbai becoming king and queen of the board againThe columnist is an Arjuna Awardee chess Grandmaster and FIDE senior trainer