Favorite Book Dedication of the Day- Viswanathan Anand

“For my mother, who told me to always write down my thoughts, good or bad. She said, ‘One day you will read them and realize how beautiful they are.’

— Anand, Viswanathan. Mind Master

Highly recommend the recent book by the Anand, the five time world chess champion;

Finding myself in a country that was right in the midst of a chess boom was a godsend. Philippines was home to Asia’s first Grandmaster, Eugenio Torre, and my mother persisted in not letting my affinity for the sport slacken. In fact, she took it several steps ahead. She began by rifling through the phonebook, looking up every single ‘Torre’ in the country until her search was narrowed down to the most likely Torre. When she called on the number she’d diligently circled, it turned out that while she’d found the right Torre household, she’d got hold of the wrong brother. Luckily, the brother was a chess coach and was kind enough to suggest a good chess club for me to frequent. I wound up not attending chess lessons in Manila, though I participated in the weekend tournaments at a nearby club. Our primary mode of commuting in Manila were the kitsch, vibrantly painted Jeepneys. They were essentially United States Army jeeps that had been abandoned by the troops after World War II. Formerly used for transporting soldiers, the Jeepneys could ferry 20 to 25 passengers each and was something of a Filipino ingenuity icon. My mother and I would take them to and from the club, and a good game meant that I would be treated to a bucket of ice cream with tiny chunks of jelly and nuts in it at the parlour right next to our house. It was what I looked forward to the most after a win.

In the beginning, a trainer was hired to help me with my game. He ran me through bishop endings and it soon became evident that I already knew most of what he was trying to teach me, so the sessions were called off. While I was away at school during the afternoons, my mother would watch a one-hour chess show on television called Chess Today, which analysed the games of leading players. At the end of each episode, the show’s presenter would leave the viewers with a chess position to solve, answers to which had to be submitted via post. The winners were mailed a chess book as a prize. My mother would diligently note down every position explained during the show, sometimes even taping episodes for us to watch later, and once I was home from school we’d work on the puzzle together, solve it and post the answer. I began winning so frequently that the guys at the television station were at their wits’ end. They asked me to visit their library and help myself to as many books as I wanted, on the condition that I wouldn’t send in any more answers.

It was not just chess that my mother gave me company in. She learnt swimming too, so she could be with me in the pool at our home in Manila and offered herself up to be something of a lifeguard as I splashed around. She was indulgent in her affection towards me. Once, after I nagged her over the surprised looks my classmates exchanged upon seeing her pick me up from school in a saree, she bought herself Western clothes so she could wear them when she accompanied me.

…..

Our earliest lessons are seared into our minds and hearts. A habit I grudgingly picked up as a child on my mother’s insistence was writing down my impressions immediately after a game; typically, a loss. When you’re young, you don’t find any pressing need to live up to a routine, and back then I did it more for my mother’s satisfaction than for my benefit. I’d methodically write the notations down in neat letters and often underline — with a belligerent double streak — the notes on the portions of the game where I’d blundered. As I grew older, this practice slowly grew on me. Putting down my observations right after a defeat when the pain was raw and the sting was fresh, I stumbled upon the solutions I had seen but didn’t act upon or the ones I had overlooked. Not only did it help me spot my mistakes but it also gave me a macro perspective of whether the misses fit into some sort of a worrying pattern that needed to be eliminated.

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