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Viswanathan Anand airs his views on various topics
Expert Opinion: Vishwanathan Anand during his interaction with students.
NEW DELHI: Since landing in Chennai last month, Viswanathan Anand, currently on his routine winter vacation in India, and wife Aruna quietly escaped to a forest resort in Madhya Pradesh. Back in the Capital on a day’s visit, the NIIT’s Brand Ambassador, interacted with students from 19 cities using NIIT’s interactive software.
He was made to air his views on Friday on various subjects.
Anand, who revealed having just finished reading Mayawati’s biography Behenji and Andrew Hodges’ One to Nine — The inner life of numbers, however, opted to reserve his views on the proposed changes in the World chess championship format. “Once the present state of influx is over, I will surely tell you,” promised Anand.
On tackling terrorism: If I knew I would have slain many gunmen long ago. But seriously, you need to give police better equipment, as terrorism is a global phenomenon these days. It’s most important that people in the country be calm. In fact, all diseases and hunger are killing more people than all the terrorism in the world. These problems are also as important.
On India calling off cricket tour to Pakistan: It’s easy to understand the decision. It would be highly insensitive to the victims (if the team goes to play in Pakistan), we can’t have any links with Islamabad in the present circumstances.
On Rahul Dravid’s search for form: (Anand recalled his slump in form in 2001 at the Dortmund tournament and said fully he knew how it felt to lose form) What I did after Dortmund was that I kept on experimenting for seven to eight months. In that period also I could not really recover as I was experimenting only randomly. Rahul, too, can try to experiment. Perhaps, that will see him recover faster.
On Sourav Ganguly’s last first-class game: It’s an end to a wonderful career, which he could justifiably be proud of. It must be funny to know this is your last match. (Former World champion) Garry Kasparov had said the same thing. The rest of the world would be looking back but you have to sit and play or stand and play in his (Ganguly’s) case,” he said.
On his brief meeting with Mahendra Singh Dhoni: I was meeting him for the first time. He came across as a very warm person. But I think he was very playful. Before he presented the ring to me he said, “I hope Bhabhi (Aruna) will allow me to present you this ring.”
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