For Bakre, hope lives on after troubled times

By P.K. Ajith Kumar

KOZHIKODE, SEPT. 30. One warm night in May, Tejas Bakre felt an excruciating pain in his stomach, and started vomiting. His father, a medical practitioner himself, wasted no time to rush him to a hospital.

``That was a wise move from my father which saved my life,'' Bakre, one of India's most promising chess players, told The Hindu recently, shortly after the National rapid championship concluded at Tirur. ``The doctors who treated me said that anything could have happened if I wasn't brought to the hospital that night itself.''

The Ahmedabad-based International Master, India's eighth-ranked player with a rating of 2462 Elo points, has of course reasons to feel lucky that he is able to play at all, after recovering from a potentially very dangerous illness (``They have not yet been able to diagnose it, but it looks like it was an attack of Hepatitis'').

But there are also times when the 20-year-old curses his luck. You cannot blame him for that. For it was the most crucial period of his career that he was forced to miss because of the ailment.

First he missed the National `A' championship in Delhi (``I was eagerly looking forward to my maiden National `A', that too after winning the National `B', the qualifying event''). Then came the Asian junior championship in Teheran (``I was really keen to complete an unprecedented hat-trick at the competition, and a GM norm'').

He also could not play the National `B' championship in Nagpur. ``That was particularly disappointing, because it meant that I would not be able to play in the next National `A' either. Mind you it's an Olympiad year next year; and I really wanted to give my best shot to be a part of the Indian team,'' he said.

Woes far from over

Bakre's woes were not over. Though he hadn't completely recovered, he decided to go to Athens last month for the World junior championship. ``It was my last chance in a junior competition and I didn't want to miss it for anything,'' revealed the youngster.

So he went to Greece but was unable to play anywhere near his potential, and was placed a disappointing 24th. ``It was my poor health, more than anything else, that caused my bad show there. I had a good position after the opening in all my games, but I simply did not have the energy to concentrate.''

Bakre, a six-footer and one of the fittest chess players in the country, looked a pale shadow of his normal self at Tirur. ``It may still take quite some time before I regain my health. I have been advised not to do any physical exercises and to be extremely careful,'' he informs.

And he is eager to regain his form on the chessboard. He may have lost precious time, but he is not going to let that affect his morale. He is determined to fight back.

One saw a semblance of that spirit at Tirur. The serene, sylvan surroundings of the Thuchan Research Centre seems to have inspired him, and he began impressively. He was in the lead (along with T.S. Venkatraman from Goa) at the end of the second day of the three-day championship, with four wins from four games.

But on the third morning, he blundered against Lanka Ravi, in what turned out to be the most crucial game of the tournament, and lost. Ravi went on to win the title, and he finished fifth. ``One bad game and it was all over for me.''

Success came easily

It had all began ten years ago when his father thought that he might do well in chess after seeing him do well in strategical games. Hardly anyone played chess in Ahmedabad, but Dr. Ravindra Bakre was determined to introduce his only child to the intricacies of the game. ``I fell in love with chess immediately,'' recalls the Indian Airlines employee, ``and started playing in tournaments.''

He started winning them too, before long. When he was 10, he clinched the Gujarat State under-16 championship, ``and I kept that record for six years.'' (Like most sportsmen, he likes records).

He won the State men's championship at 13, another record. In 1997, he won his maiden National title, the under-18 title at Moga. That year, in Mumbai, he also claimed the Asian sub-junior championship.

He won the Asian junior championship in 1998 in Teheran and in 1999 in Mumbai, but he was unlucky on both occasions to miss the GM norm, as he had tied for the first place. In 1998 he also won the World youth championship in Moscow. ``I had won three international championships in eight months,'' says Bakre whose achievements are all the more remarkable because he comes from a State without much of a history in chess. ``People are mostly business-minded back in Gujarat, and in fact, Geet Sethi and I are the only international sportsmen from Ahmedabad.''

Last October in Jamshedpur, he was in outstanding form when he won his maiden National `B', one of the toughest tournaments on the domestic circuit. He had nine points from ten rounds, and went on to finish the tournament unbeaten.

But it has been a different story this year. First there was the horrific earthquake that rocked Gujarat. Then he fell ill.

Hope, however, lives on. ``I want to be a super GM,'' he says, smiling.

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