Chess players happy to keep their blind date going

Express India
Monday, October 29, 2007

Chess players happy to keep their blind date going

By Shivani Naik

Mumbai, October 29 He would be forgiven for begrudging cricket all the 
unnecessary fanfare the game attracts. 21-year-old Shiva Sekhar would even be 
excused the resentment since cricket gave him a scar for life. Playing the game 
in his backyard at 7, Shiva Sekhar was struck in the eye by a rising delivery. 
He rubbed it hard, yet ignored the itching for the next six months without 
reporting to a doctor which resulted in permanent blindness. Today, this man 
from Andhra has reignited his enthusiasm for sport through a quieter game: he 
plays chess. 

Happily for him, Shiva Sekhar also refrained from demonising cricket, and plays 
for his state's blind squad instead. Chess though, has taken a clear headstart 
in the passion-stakes. 

"It was an accident and I had to get over it," he explains, adding that 
redirecting his competitive juices into chess needed little effort. The lanky 
player dabbles at cricket on weekends but has ensured that in his prime sport - 
he remains on track to fulfill his aspiration of holding an IM title one day. 

Similar is the case of India's top blind chess player Shrikrishna Udappa, who 
lost his eyesight playing cricket, but has shrugged off the misery to 
rediscover his confidence on the chequered board. Udappa has reached the 
heights of an Elo rating of 2055, and the lawyer from Shimoga - Karnataka, 
frequently playing in open events for the sighted is tipped to break into the 
legion of IMs in India. 

Unlike in Russia, where blind chess players have attained the IM norms, and 
turned professional making a living out of the game, India despite its 
staggering numbers hasn't seen the game take off as would be expected of its 
size. India's blind population of a near 1.5 crore has only 5000 actively 
pursuing chess. 

Wooden boards with depressed white squares and raised black ones are integral 
to their lives, with the black coins all nailed with pins to enable playing by 
touch. Most record scores on the Braille script, while some have been recording 
moves on a walkman. 

At higher international levels of competition, players are expected to announce 
their moves in German. "The Germans pioneered blind chess," informs Pankaj 
Athawale who has helped devise the new folding-board for the blind. 

But rarely is blindness uniformly dark for the visually challenged. 

Blanketed as blind, their individual maladies are seldom heard - let alone 
addressed. A player like Padmakumar suffers from a rare and complex blindness 
where retinal cord joining his eyes and brain was diagnosed as defective. 
Curiously, if he donates his eyes, the other person would be able to see. Or, 
former national champion Atul Kakade can't see objects against light, but his 
vision is moderate when viewed from an angle. 

City player Swapnil Shah can't recognise faces after cataract dimmed his vision 
early in life, while for Asian champion Gaurav Garodia (26) who suffered from 
macculav degeneration, partial blindness was sudden and alarming. "When I was 
8, one fine day it just went off," Garodia says making light of the tragedy, 
imitating a defused bulb. 

"Earlier when I could see, I wasn't good enough to beat my father and brother 
at chess. Now since I'm focussed on it, I'm pretty good," he laughs. 

Having worked on chess over the last one decade, Garodia has overcome the 
beginner's hurdle, especially acute for blind players. Though a practicing 
advocate, he knows he can't argue with fate. "I just win at chess," he simply 
says. 


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