While covering the World Chess Championship match between Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen at Chennai’s Hyatt Regency in late 2013, this correspondent paid a visit to the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. It was the final day of the National Under-9 championship, in which more than 300 kids were taking part.
One met the girls’ champion first. She said her name was Divya Deshmukh and that she was from Nagpur. When asked about the boys’ championship, she said: “A boy from Kerala, called Nihal Sarin, is the champion.”
The name sounded quite un-Kerala-like. But one soon found out Nihal was from Kerala after all, from Thrissur in fact. Nihal has since gone on to become one of the most exciting young talents in world chess. He is ranked No. 7 in the world among juniors and 97 among men.
Divya has been quietly making a name, as well.
She is ranked 19th among junior girls and has been the world champion in age-group tournaments. She was also part of the gold medal-winning Indian team — Nihal was a teammate — at the Online Chess Olympiad.
Fourth youngest
At Bhubaneswar last month, she became the National senior women’s champion. At 16, she is the fourth-youngest to win the tournament in its 48-year history.
Not many expected Divya to triumph at Bhubaneswar, where she was seeded only eighth. Once she stunned top seed R. Vaishali in the penultimate round — it was her seventh win in a row, which is a remarkable feat in such tournaments — she was almost certain to be the champion.
“I was glad that I could win the title at Bhubaneswar, though my aim was just to get back into good form in over-the-board chess after the COVID-19 pandemic,” Divya tells The Hindu over phone from Nagpur. “It was only after beating Vaishali that I really started to think of winning the tournament.”
For someone who wasn’t too excited about tournaments in the first couple of years after learning the game, she has come a long way on the 64 squares. Her parents — both gynaecologists — had enrolled her in a chess academy because she was too small to hold a badminton racquet, unlike her elder sister.
“They wanted to put me in some sport, and an indoor one at that, as they didn’t want me to get hurt,” says Divya. “I wasn’t too keen initially, and I remember I used to fall asleep during the training at the academy of Rahul Joshi, who passed away a couple of years ago.”
But for Joshi, Divya’s career in chess may never have taken off, says her mother Namrata. “Until he told us that Divya should play in tournaments, we were not aware that there were any for chess,” she says. “When she won the National Under-7 championship at Puducherry in 2012, we felt she probably had a future in chess.”
Divya remembers winning her first National title. “I was suffering from fever throughout the tournament,” she recalls. “So much so, I had fallen asleep, because of the medicines I was taking, during the game against Aditi Mohanty, but she woke me up when I had some 15 minutes left on the clock. I won that game. It was kind of her.”
After that triumph at Puducherry, Divya went on to dominate her age-group on the National circuit and do well in tournaments above her category as well. She was only 11 when she won her first of three back-to-back under-15 titles in 2017.
After winning her maiden World title in the under-10 championship in 2014, she clinched five more medals at the age-group tournament. Last year she became a Woman Grandmaster.
One of her greatest moments happened online, however. She helped India become the joint champion of the 2020 Online Chess Olympiad, in which 163 countries competed.
It happened in dramatic, and controversial, circumstances, though. India had actually lost the final to Russia, but the team appealed to world chess governing body FIDE that it was because of the internet outage that India lost two of its games. Nihal and Divya were playing those games and neither was in a losing position.
“When I saw that my internet connection had gone, I felt so bad and cried,” says Divya. “I felt the Indian team was going to lose because of me; it had happened once earlier in the tournament and on that occasion the fault was with the internet at my home. Later, when I found out that the reason was a global outage, I was mighty relieved and of course delighted that we could share the title with Russia. It was the first time that I was a part of such a big event.”
She says she felt proud of being a teammate of Anand and Koneru Humpy, two of her idols. “I admire them greatly,” she says. “During the National Under-9 championship in 2013, I had requested my parents to take me to the inaugural ceremony of the World title match as I wanted to see Anand.”
Anand the mentor
Now she gets to work with the legend. She is one of the most promising young Indian stars being mentored by Anand.
“I consider myself lucky that I can work with him on my chess,” she says. “It is amazing how strong a player he continues to be.”
Her former coach R.B. Ramesh says he was convinced of Divya’s potential right from the beginning. “As a player I found her confident and ambitious,” he says. “She is good at calculations and is willing to work hard.”
Hard work alone is not enough to move up in international chess. You need financial support, too.
“Playing in overseas tournaments and getting quality coaches are very expensive,” says Namrata, who had to stop her flourishing medical practice so that she could accompany Divya to tournaments. “She has never had a sponsor and we have been supporting her with our savings and taking loans from our relatives. We are already finding it difficult.”
Divya deserves support. She is perhaps India’s brightest prospect in women’s chess at the moment. The country may have several promising stars among boys but that isn’t the case when it comes to girls.
“It is a worrying fact that we have only a few who show real promise among girls,” says Grandmaster Pravin Thipsay. “So it is nice to watch Divya’s progress. It is a great achievement that she won the National seniors at 16.”
Divya wants to achieve even greater things, such as winning the World championship. “I want to get the GM title,” she says. “And I want to play in more open tournaments.”
And yes, she remembers meeting Nihal in Chennai in 2013. “When I saw this boy after the tournament, I asked him if he was a player,” she says. “He said ‘yes’. I asked him how the tournament went for him. He said he had won it. He is now one of my friends in chess.”
