It’s hard to imagine five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand saying, “He showed me chess in a way I hadn’t seen it before”. But that’s the legend’s honest admission when you talk to him about the painter in the house — his son, Sai Akhil Anand. Akhil, a class IX student and an upcoming artist, is showcasing his paintings at his solo art exhibition called “Morphogenesis” in Chennai, and the title emphasises his love for patterns that he turns into a piece of art.

The extent of Akhil’s imagination of patterns stunned Anand during an odd game of chess they indulge in. “What I found really interesting was that he looked at some of my chess pieces in certain games and pointed out the patterns that they traced out with their moves. He found those useful for very interesting artscapes,” says Anand, talking to mid-day from his home in Chennai. “So he shows me chess in a way I haven’t seen it before, and that is very enjoyable.”

Akhil developed this penchant for figures at a very young age. His sketches of Mahatma Gandhi and Albert Einstein were what first caught Anand’s attention. Akhil then started training under artist Diana Satish and has since been exploring various art forms, most noticeably from the lockdown days during the pandemic.