Chess MATE

MY FRIEND Sekhar had family connections that he could be proud of indeed. Sir C.V. Raman was his grandfather. Chandrasekhar, the physicist and Chandrasekhar the economist were his close relatives. With such antecedents it was no wonder that Sekhar was brilliant. He and I did our M.A. course in the Madras Christian College, and were residents of Bishop Heber Hall. We were constantly together.

His versatility


Sekhar scored very high marks with apparent ease. His prose style was concise, based on the principle, `Less is more.' He was an outstanding chess player - India's No.4 at that time. Apart from all his intellectual accomplishments, he was also a gifted singer.

His voice was very much like that of C. H. Atma, the famous singer of ghazals, and he had a singing style that was captivating. When he had to sing to a gathering, he would preface his song with some announcement like, "Ladies and Gentlemen, I will now sing you a lovely song. (Pause) I say a lovely song because it is a song of love."

Singing in the train


Many of us had season tickets to travel by the suburban electric trains from Tambaram to Beach station. This was mainly to enable us to attend intercollegiate lectures in the Presidency College. But we loafed all over Madras, travelling every other day to the city. On Saturdays there was a train that started from Beach station close to midnight. We invariably took a ride on this train every week.

By the time it reached Guindy it was almost empty. Sometimes there were just three or four of us in the whole carriage. And the train was driven very fast after Guindy.

The wind whipped about our faces, and whistled past us. And then Sekhar would start singing. His voice took on a particular timbre in combination with the breeze, and it was mesmerizing. We leaned back in our seats, drugged by the music and lulled by the wind.

When we reached Tambaram we made it a point to go and thank the driver for a wonderful ride. This Anglo-Indian gentleman was a bit surprised the first time, and perhaps a little doubtful about our intentions. But later he started looking forward to seeing us, and it became a weekly ritual.

Chess whiz


In chess, Sekhar was like a wizard, wrapping up games in record time. He sometimes played simultaneous chess against several opponents, walking up and down along the rows of players. Once he played against twenty-five opponents and beat all of them. But he brushed aside our awed reaction, saying that Najdorf of Argentina had played against two hundred and fifty players.

One of the players facing Sekhar was furtively making two moves at a time. Some of us noticed this and were about to kick him out of the match. But Sekhar stopped us. "Don't bother about that chap," he said. "The more moves he makes the more he blunders. It makes it easy for me." And so it did.

The quick and the dud


Sekhar taught me how to play chess. Though I knew the basics earlier, he introduced me to the more complicated nuances of the game. It fascinated me so much that I forced Sekhar to play with me every day. We started playing after dinner at about 8.30 pm, and went on late into the night, sometimes all night. He thrashed me soundly in game after game, but we continued to play on.

Sekhar must have been bored to death. He made a lightning move, and then waited as I laboriously plotted my next move. After my move, he made one in a jiffy, and then yawned away as I pored over the board. He was half asleep, but still beat me left and right.

After about two months of this routine, I seemed to be in a winning position one day at about 1.30 a.m. Sekhar offered me a draw. But I decided to reject the offer and play on. He was dodging me as I tried to pin him down. It seemed to go on and on, interminably. Suddenly impatient, Sekhar moved one of my pieces to checkmate himself. "There, that's all there is to it," he said. So, though I won the game, it was Sekhar's move that won it for me.

Incidentally, that was the only game I ever won against Sekhar.


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