Last Word: Wearing his heart on his sleeve
I don’t follow all sports in the same way. This is not unique, however. With some I follow the human stories, ignoring the technicalities. Formula One, for instance, where cars and circuits are of no particular interest, but the drivers often are. Chess is another, where I might be able to beat a casual seven-year-old but can’t explain the various forms of defence and attack.
My fascination for chess began with the Bobby Fischer v Boris Spassky World Championship match when daily newspapers carried the moves of each game, and many like me replayed these without quite understanding them. There weren’t enough experts — and frankly, at that age we soon moved on to other things. You can only get good at the game if you love chess, Fischer once said, a sentiment that holds for sports in general. Perhaps I didn’t love chess that much.
But Fischer fascinated. His stunts shocked the world — he forfeited the second game after objecting to cameras in the room — but he is one of the great players and characters of the game. Chess champions tend not to be like other people (sometimes that ‘other’ seems a concession). Viswanathan Anand, the boy next door, might be an exception, but in the Fischer mould is Magnus Carlsen (in pic), who wears his heart on his sleeve.
“Chess is war over the board,” Fischer once declared, “The object is to crush the opponent’s mind.” Asked after the recent Norway tournament about who he saw as the next great champion, Carlsen said, “There is no one. That’s the honest answer…” Self-obsession can be forgiven in players of such exceptional talent! Geniuses are allowed a certain latitude.
In Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj ke Khiladi, based on a Premchand short story, two noblemen continue playing chess even as their city falls to the invaders. The Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa tells a similar story but with the emphasis on a different aspect where two obsessives play chess even as their Persian city is being ravaged: Whatever we take from this useless life,/ Be it glory or fame,/ Love, science, or life itself,/ It’s worth no more/ Than the memory of a well-played game/ And a match won/ Against a better player.
All sports strive for the right move; these have to be made within the rules — no wonder then that chess has been a favourite of philosophers and writers. “Life is like a game of chess”, wrote Schopenhauer; “we draw up a plan; but it remains dependent on what in the game the opponent, and in life fate, see fit to do”.
World champion Gukesh’s calm, almost amused response to Carlsen’s angry table-thumping response to losing to the Indian in Norway might suggest we have another Anand among champions. Asked at the end of the tournament what he would remember most, Gukesh replied: Beating Carlsen. When Carlsen was asked the same question he said, “The same as Gukesh.” Aggression and a sense of humour. As a Grandmaster once said, “Every chess player gets to live many lives in one lifetime.”