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NEW DELHI — The girls gathered in a school auditorium here on a recent Saturday were beaming and with pride and nervous with anticipation. They would soon have a chance to meet the star of their dreams: Viswanathan Anand.
“I want to be the next Vishy,” declared Chetna Karnani, 16, referring to Anand by his nickname. “I practice four hours every day.”
Anand is no Bollywood heartthrob or pop singer. The idol the girls were swooning over was an unassuming, bespectacled, 40-year-old reigning world chess champion.
Anand, who has held the world title for three years, appears to have earned the fame that India usually reserves for movie stars, cricket players and politicians. The girls had come to school on a Saturday with the hope of playing a game with him.
When he arrived with a retinue of four black-clad bodyguards who protect him from getting mobbed at public events, the star-struck students sheepishly sought his autograph and peppered him with technical questions about his last title match, against the Bulgarian Veselin Topalov. Historians say chess has roots in the ancient Indian games of chaturanga and shatranj, which were widely played here in their time. But chess has never taken hold in modern India. Anand is the first Indian ever to win the championship, and the country still lags far behind Russia and other eastern European countries in producing grandmasters.
But Anand’s success has created a groundswell of enthusiasm for the game. Amit Varma, a popular Indian blogger, equated his impact here with the following Bobby Fischer created for chess in the United States when he defeated the Russian grandmaster Boris Spassky in 1972. “As I write these words, the day after his win, the newspapers and TV channels are full of him,” Varma wrote after Anand’s recent defeat of Topalov in a column for Yahoo! India. “Chess, amazingly enough, might just be on its way to becoming a spectator sport in India.”
In addition to Anand, there are now 21 Indian grandmasters, three of whom are ranked in the top 100 internationally and at least one of whom works with Anand as a second, or helper in chess parlance.
Anand has used his fame to promote the game in India, sponsoring a nationwide network of chess clubs like the one at Karnani’s high school, Sadhu Vasvani International School for Girls in southern Delhi. Officials estimate the clubs, which are administered by an Indian education company, NIIT, have signed up 850,000 students at 8,000 schools in its eight-year history. The goal, Anand said, is not to produce other Indian grandmasters or champions, though he welcomes that as a potential side effect. Rather, he wants to get young people interested in chess as a tool to improve their ability to focus, analyze and reason. Studies have shown that playing chess can bolster mental skills.
“We are very happy to produce chess champions,” he said. “But we want to create mind champions.” He said he was surprised that the students that morning had been able to ask and answer detailed questions about the moves that led to his victory over Topalov in May. “Before you had to go to a chess club to get that level of interaction. Now, you are getting it in the school system.” VIKAS BAJAJ
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