- August 7, 2025
Chennai Masters 2025: Fire Hath No Fury Like The Pursuit Of Patience
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An event that had to be pushed by an earthly cycle around the sun, due to a fire sparked by electric wirings, lost no sheen with as many as 15 brilliant across categories.
News18
The true essence of an entity resides strongest at the point of its genesis. And what better place to explore the ever-varying puzzle of chess than at the nation of its origin? Maybe the cradle of the sport in the country that conceived the notion of a battle on a board serves as a fitting microcosm of the wider evolution of the game.
The recent success of the Indian contingent on the world stage is epitomised by the fascination the nation finds in arriving at answers to haphazard puzzles to the untrained eye.
An apparent thirst for the quest of perfection of the mind can be observed by the sheer number gathered around the board at the Chennai Grandmasters on the revised opening day with commentary halls filled to the last seat and the media room brimming with videography material as journos await their turn to get a quick chat in with arguably some of the finest minds in the nation and some from across borders.
Calls to build a compelling narrative around the sport range far and wide, with some of the top-billed stars of the sport urging the audience to observe, nay, contribute to ‘the bigger picture’.
And perhaps no other city does it better than good-old Chennai, home of the one and only Vishy.
There! You don’t even need the expansion of the nick. You already know who we are talking about.
Vow of silence
If you have had the opportunity to walk into a competition room where a top-quality contest of chess is in progress, you’d observe how similar it is to a monastery.
An incubator of wits, of sorts, nearly noise-proofed where even the stop clocks don’t make a sound. The only feed to one’s auditory senses being the crackling of knuckles as a GM ganders around the area, stopping for the occasional peep at another board, while still pondering over the course of his or her own.
A heavily controlled environment, which has also come to be digitally monitored with feeds going out to the world through optical and wireless networks.
While access to the carpenter areas isn’t garden variety, the restraint demonstrated by ‘visitors’ across ages is perhaps a nod to the deep-seated fascination of minds to get a glimpse of magic on the grand stage, even at the cost of verbal expression.
Carnival of wits
No one does celebrations quite like India. Period.
The core principle behind celebrations is the joy of sharing. And to add to the allure, the celebrations aren’t limited to the confines of a festive period alone.
Volunteers and organisers sharing agendas, commentators sharing their opinions, and hosts sharing their culture.
Five of the twenty-strong field, including the masters and the challengers categories, call a foreign soil their own.
And true to the intrinsically embedded sentiment of service, a cultural crash course is dished out to those oblivious to the richest of the land.
Stands offering artifacts local to the region, merchandise commemorating the event, stalls doling out wison in the form of print compilations decorate the concourse, all amid stations trading dough for dough.
An event that had to be pushed by an earthly cycle around the sun, due to a fire sparked by electric wiring, lost no sheen as the nation’s top-rated classical player, Arjun Erigaisi, headlined the proceedings in an event that demonstrates the incredible depth of talent with as many as 15 players across categories.
The patience to persevere through adversity is a motif that reverberates through the annals of time. And as sport mirrors life, the trend of focusing on the process first, and the eventual end product manifests on the 64-squared mat.
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