Playing chess with Viswanath Anand // Ezhilarasan childcare chess

 PLAYING CHESS WITH VISWANATH ANAND AND Losing

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In my teenage, I had been very active playing chess and table tennis. I had also participated in tournaments and got one or two prizes. This incident happened when I was about 20 years old. Then I was doing my graduation. I participated in a chess tournament being conducted at the Mahatma Gandhi Stadium, Salem.  About 40 or 50 persons, many very elderly to me and many very younger also participated in it. 

 The tournament went for about 7 or 8 days and for about 10 rounds of matches. In that tournament, a cute looking boy from Chennai, studying 7th standard came first, after winning all of us. As usual, the person who comes first was asked to say a few words about the tournament. So, the 7th standard kid was also asked to talk.

The boy sporting a “scooter hair cutting” started to talk in English. I was astonished hearing him talk very fluently and casually in English. He seemed to be a convent-educated boy and talking with great confidence. “Oh my God ! After all a kid, studying 7th standard had defeated me and everybody else both elderly and better in chess than me. And now he is holding the mic and giving a speech. Great job! I thought”. That boy was none other than the great Viswanath Anand. 

It is now great to see his photo appear in the school text-books.  It seems that the Mahatma Gandhi Stadium, Salem victory was the first victory in his career, a chess club member told me recently. 

I would have “proudly” narrated about this “defeat” many times to many people who would lend me their ears. I would say that I had participated once in a chess tournament played by Viswanath Anand and “lost” along with many other people.

I wanted my children to understand that winning and losing is natural in any game. But with whom you win and with whom you lose matters a lot. So, even a defeat with a stronger person is more valuable than a win from a weaker person. And then from sports we should learn to keep on improving ourselves day after day – whatever sport we were playing.

This also makes me recall a TV-ad. 

A mom would say to her husband while offering him a sweet (Gulob jamoon), saying that their son had won the second prize in a match. Eating the sweet, he would enquire, “Good, how many persons participated?”. And she would reply, “TWO”. Did you get the catch?

Written by

Ezhilarasan Venkatachalam
Salem
Tamil Based English Trainer


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