‘Thambi’, the mascot of the 44th Chess Olympiad, greeted me soon after I landed at the Chennai airport. Wearing his white dhoti and shirt, he welcomed every passenger with folded hands from the blue hoarding. I encountered him several times during the smooth drive to Mamallapuram, the scenic venue of the Olympiad. The world’s most prestigious team event for chess, featuring over 1,700 players from 186 countries, has created a huge buzz. It is getting the attention it deserves from the public and the media in India. This may be the largest chess event for India, but there have been some big ones before, such as the World Championships of 2000 and 2013. However, those events did not quite capture the public’s imagination like the way the Olympiad has.
Viswanathan Anand was the common feature at both those events. I remember the frenzy he created at Delhi’s Hyatt Regency more than two decades ago. I saw how much he meant to the Indian chess fans. It was my second meeting with him. The first time I met him, I wasn’t a journalist. I was one of the players at the Kerala State Junior Chess Championship at Pala. He had come for a felicitation after winning the World Junior Championship in 1987; it was a turning point for his career and for Indian chess.
When Anand played Magnus Carlsen at home, 13 years after his first title, the media interest in chess had grown considerably. I remember chatting, at Chennai’s Hyatt Regency, with members of a particularly large contingent from Norway, who did not want to miss the possible crowning of their first world champion. Carlsen did not disappoint them. Now, he is back in Chennai and is among the biggest attractions at the Olympiad. He arrived shortly after abdicating his world title, which he won five times in a row, citing lack of motivation.
