A Passage Through Chess & Time (07 July 2020)
I come from a family of chess aficionados. For the last few generations, my forefathers have exhibited an unwavering passion for the sport. To the best of my knowledge, it was my grandfather who injected chess into my family lineage — perhaps an artefact from his days in the Army. My father, at the age of 20, voyaged halfway across the country in a bus to compete in a tournament in the hinterlands of an earthquake-stricken Bihar. While I can’t recall any lively anecdotes of chess involving myself, there are good reasons to believe I started learning it before I could walk. Suffice to say, chess occupies a cherished spot in my childhood memories, and is much more than just a sport for me.
The allure of chess lies in its paradoxes. It’s a sport that is rife with allusions of violence without being violent; a muted melee between two minds that requires them to quietly meditate in each other’s presence. It’s a peculiar concoction of antagonism mixed with intellect and intimacy. This might account for why victories and defeats in chess feel remarkably personal. I suppose this is a hallmark distinctive of chess; how memories of triumphs and tribulations tend to be eternal. Occasionally, a few stray memories of embarrassing losses return to haunt me. Or perhaps I’m just a sore loser.
I first started playing chess with my father. Although it took time to be well-drilled with the basics, by the age of 4, I could play full-fledged matches. And I started winning right off the bat against my father, every single time… or so I was led to believe. You see, our matches followed a peculiar trajectory. The opening moves were open-play — totally uncoordinated and unaided, with me exercising my volition to the fullest. Beyond a certain point, however, I was subtly nudged by my father, warning me of my mistakes, alerting me to attacking opportunities, and sometimes suggesting the next move. These matches invariably resulted in me winning, much to my delight amidst a shade of childish ignorance. I was convinced of my prodigious talent, and saw chess as an avenue for feeling triumphant.
After racking up a number of easy victories against my father, it was time for me to compete against my grandfather. That was when the gravy train was brought to an abrupt halt. My grandfather was a ruthless competitor. Unlike my father, his idea of chess was purely a combative one. He did not believe in going easy against anyone, and did not hesitate to hand down the most demoralizing of defeats. It was rare for our matches to last beyond fifteen moves. Strangely enough, my father used to defeat my grandfather in their marathon match-ups. It was a peculiar food-chain amongst us, one whose reality I could not quite grasp initially. While I could take solace in besting my father, the nagging defeats against my grandfather forced me to take chess much more seriously. I eventually grew out of the mirage of competence that my father tried to sustain, and knew that I had to genuinely get better in order to defeat them, and so I did — I think.
Similar to other physical sports, chess is much kinder on the youth. Our cognitive abilities tend to decline after a certain age, which means it becomes much harder to memorize, focus, and compete in chess. Even at the highest level of the sport, the rankings are dominated by twenty-year-olds. Vishwananthan Anand is arguably an outlier for his longevity, but he too has fallen prey to the inevitable decay festered by time. I tend to believe that my grandfather too was an outlier. He remained fiercely competitive well into his seventies. Although the balance of power between us had shifted firmly in my favour by the time I turned 15, defeating him was no easy task. The last match that we ever played was a tense draw; one that I have no qualms about not winning. While I have undoubtedly improved in chess over the years, I sometimes wonder how I would have measured up against my grandfather when he was at his best.
Unlike the gladiatorial match-ups that I’ve had against my grandfather, matches against my father tend to be rather… complex. I’m not sure if he ever abandoned the ritual of nudging me from my errors whenever we compete. While we did (and still do) have our fair share of thrilling matches, I sense a smudge of uneasiness in his victories, and I’ve always wondered why. Imaginably, it’s a pleasant reminder of our younger days in my childhood, when those deliberate defeats perhaps served the purpose of keeping me engaged in chess from the very beginning. For a long while, I’ve had a cynical view about this ritual as being rather anti-competitive. I perceived it as an unnecessary handout that’s more insulting than helpful, a practice that I was determined not to indulge in. But now as I contemplate further, I’m unsure if I can keep myself from doing so.
The lockdown afforded me an opportunity to once again play chess with my father. It’s been a while since we last played; three years at least. Our previous matches were difficult encounters, with him having an unambiguous upper hand. And so, as I went in to compete once again, I expected something similar. This time however, things were different. I was winning rather effortlessly. While the first few matches were victories that I thought I was happy with, it became clear soon after that my happiness was nothing but a facade that cloaked my quiet dread. I’m not sure if my wins were because of my gradual improvement in chess, or him becoming yet another casualty of time that every chess player is inevitably destined to confront. I knew he could no longer enjoy losing to me since the losses were far too easy, a somber reminder of the ravages of time. I want to believe I have improved significantly as a player in order to make peace with myself, but such a belief seems far too contrived. After all these years of competing, for the first time in my life, I now have to contemplate whether I should lose a few games deliberately in order to restore his confidence. Perhaps this is how my father felt as he was gradually getting better than my grandfather at chess. The mantle of being the most proficient chess player in the family seems awfully daunting. Regardless of how I choose to diagnose my conundrum, it seems life has indeed come full circle.
Originally published at the NUJS Writer’s Block. I’d like to thank the good people at the NUJS Writer’s Block and the MagCom for giving me a platform to write stuff.
