Checkmating him

P. K. AJITH KUMAR

Poor Sriram Jha. Rarely has been a champion, in an important National competition at that, overshadowed by someone who finished runner-up, and another who ended up at the ninth place.

That's what happened in Nagpur on July 9. More than Jha's success at the National 'B' chess championship, it was the feats of Swati Ghate and S. Vijayalakshmi, which made bigger news. For, the two 20-something girls created history, by qualifying for next year's National men's 'A' championship. Yes, the men's championship.

Women's chess in India came of age on July 9. And that moment definitely deserved to eclipse Jha's finest moment.

To see the achievement of Swati and Viji, as Vijayalakshmi is always called, in the right perspective, you will have to consider the fact only the best 20 players in the country are eligible for the National 'A' championship, the toughest chess tournament in India, which is getting tougher every year.

Of course chess is one sport in which women are free to match their wits with men. In fact the No. 20 player in the men's world ranking is a woman - Judit Polgar, the idol of female chess players the world over. The pretty genius from Hungary was once even inside the top ten, and at one time she was the World's youngest Grandmaster, beating the record of Bobby Fischer.

For Polgar's Indian sisters, though, it has been a long struggle. It still is, for most of them.

Men never liked the idea of competing - let alone, losing - against women across the chessboard. "When I started to do well against men, they did everything to discourage me," Rohini Khadilkar, one of the pioneers of the women's game in India, once told in an interview to this daily. "They would smoke in front of my face."

And they did succeed in blowing her chances of qualification for the National 'A' (though she still made it with the help of the Parliament in 1976 is another matter).

Rohini is one of the three sisters who popularised chess among women. The most talented of them all, she won five National women's 'A' championships, while her elder sisters, Jayashree won four times and Vasanti once. It indeed was very much a family affair for the Bombay sisters, as one of them won the title championship on every occasion in the first ten years of the National championship. Until Bhagyashree Thipsay, another Maharashtrian, dethroned the sisters in 1985, at Nagpur.

Bhagyashree, at 40, is still a force to reckon with. And she has seen women's chess coming a long way from the days when people in her hometown of Sangli looked at her in amazement when she told them that she had gone to Bangalore to play in a tournament.

Today, though, the women's game is doing pretty well, with the ladies making the best of the limited opportunities they have. India has two Woman Grandmasters - Vijayalakshmi and the astonishing Koneru Humpy - and a dozen International Woman Masters.

Last November Indian women did a lot better than their seeding at the chess Olympiad in Istanbul, where Viji won the silver medal on the top board with a splendid display. Viji is ranked 42nd in the world currently, and certainly has the ability to gatecrash into the top ten in not-too-distant a future.

And in the 14-year-old Humpy we have a potential women's World champion. The Vijayawada prodigy, already the winner of three World age-group titles, won a men's GM tournament in Hungary last month.

Viji made a very pertinent point when she was asked for her reactions on Humpy joining the WGM club. "Not everyone gets the chance to chase norms in tournaments in Europe," she had said.

Quite true. Only two Indian female players have sponsors besides Humpy - Aarthie Ramaswamy, a former World under-18 champion, and Tania Sachdev. Safira Shahnaz, one of our leading players, is without a job, in spite of having a degree in electronics engineering. "And there has only been one WGM tournament in India all these years," as Bhagyashree pointed out in a recent interview.

It is indeed time the Indian women got a better deal. "We could do with some sponsorships," they say in unision.

What Swati and Viji did in Nagpur should be a huge morale booster for all the chess playing women and girls, in India. For the two girls, it has been a dream-come-true after missing the mark by a whisker on many occasions in the past.

Of course, at the men's National 'A' next year, they would find the likes of Krishnan Sasikirans, Abhijit Kuntes, Pendyala Harikrishnas and Dibyendu Baruas pretty tough opponents. But one thing is sure: the ladies would not go down without a fight.

And they could take heart from the fact that the current National men's champion in Lithuania is a woman: 17-year-old Victorija Cmylite.

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