‘Beautiful board’: How chess stored an Indian village from alcohol, playing | Fitness


Marottichal, Bharat – Telephones, wallets and half-drunk teacups muddle blank tables – with the exception of for one – at a teahouse in southern Bharat, the place a people has shaped round a chess board and two competition.

One in every of them is 15-year-old Gowrishankar Jayaraj. Surrounded via spectators vying for a view of the chess board, Jayaraj is competing blindfolded.

Taking part in fickle from the sport’s opening approach {the teenager} should visualise, guard and replace a psychological style of the board, as strikes from each gamers are communicated aloud via a delegated referee.

Jayaraj is taking part in a miles used Child John, whose resonance is taut with discomfort. His shrinking shoulders and pursed mouth betray that he’s a handful of strikes clear of dropping his fourth recreation in just about 40 mins.

“Gowrishankar is just 15 and already something of a chess prodigy. He beats me even when he is blind,” says John.

Child John, left, taking part in towards a blindfolded Gowrishankar Jayaraj, a emerging Indian chess celebrity, in Marottichal [Mirja Vogel/Al Jazeera]

‘Chess Village of India’

Jayaraj and John are citizens of Marottichal, a sleepy village of just about 6,000 citizens situated on the underpinning of the Western Ghats within the picturesque Thrissur district of Bharat’s Kerala climate.

Within the early 2000s, Marottichal turned into identified via the chess folk in Kerala because the “Chess Village of India” as a result of no less than one individual in each family right here is thought to be chess-proficient. Around the village, nation frequently take a seat throughout chessboards, competing within the shadow of bus stops, outdoor grocery stores and at the place.

“More than 4,500 people here – or 75 percent – of the village’s 6,000 residents are proficient players,” says John, who could also be the president of Marottichal’s Chess Affiliation.

Jayaraj is these days ranked inside of Bharat’s manage 600 lively chess gamers, in line with the Global Chess Federation (FIDE), and hopes so as to add to Bharat’s rising stature as an international chief within the game.

In September, Bharat swept the Discoverable and Girls’s gold medals on the 2024 Chess Olympiad. Next, the rustic’s youngest-ever grandmaster, Gukesh Dommaraju, 18, gained the Global Chess Championship in December. And Grandmaster Koneru Humpy capped off a victory-laden 12 months for Bharat later she gained the FIDE Girls’s Global Speedy Chess Championship the similar life.

Jayaraj, who these days holds a 2012 ranking via FIDE, hopes to observe within the footsteps of Indian heroes like Viswanathan Anand and Dommaraju, and transform a grandmaster.

His dream displays the lengthy go Marottichal has taken to split from a name very other from the only it these days relishes.

Charaliyil Unnikrishnan (middle) sits next to Gowrishankar Jayaraj, while Baby John (standing) laughs. Unnikrishnan, a former Maoist rebel, brought ches to the village [Mirja Vogel/Al Jazeera]
Charaliyil Unnikrishnan, centre, sits later to Gowrishankar Jayaraj, moment Child John, status, laughs. Unnikrishnan, a former Maoist rise up, introduced chess to the village [Mirja Vogel/Al Jazeera]

‘King and saviour’

4 a long time in the past, the village used to be within the hold of an alcohol dependancy and playing situation that used to be pushing many households to the verge of destroy. 

Within the Seventies, 3 Marottichal families had been brewing nut-based alcohol for private intake. However via the early 80s, the village had transform a regional hub for illicit alcohol manufacturing.

“People weren’t just drinking, they were brewing and selling liquor in their houses every night,” Jayaraj Manazhy, a resident of the village – unrelated to Gowrishankar Jayaraj – tells Al Jazeera.

The industry flowed between villages with Marottichal because the supply of the alcohol.

However farming households started to overlook their cattle and vegetation. With diminishing returns from the land, villagers quickly grew to become to playing thru card video games on the liquor manufacturing homes, from the place bookies additionally operated.

A shortage of ordinary source of revenue and the reliance on alcohol noticed many households fall into poverty.

“Young children were left without clothes to wear. Others were starving,” says any other native, who asked anonymity. There gave the impression to be negative hope for an finish to the epidemic.

Till Charaliyil Unnikrishnan, an area resident-turned-exile, returned to Marottichal within the overdue Nineteen Eighties.

Unnikrishnan were kept away from via his population for becoming a member of a Maoist motion in his adolescence. He gave up the motion and returned in his early 30s to arrange a teahouse within the center of the village.

However the affect alcohol held over his village perturbed the previous rise up. “It was a dark time back then for our community,” he remembers to Al Jazeera.

Unnikrishnan determined to behave.

He assembled a miniature staff of pals whom he had identified from his juvenile years within the village and started networking with the better halves and moms of the liquor manufacturers who had been angered via their husbands and sons for spearheading manufacturing.

Over the process months, Unnikrishnan won independent tip-offs about brewing instances, which in most cases took park lengthy into the evening. Unnikrishnan and his pals would raid the homes the place alcohol used to be being produced and saved, destroying invisible provides and the apparatus worn to form it.

Once in a while, they had been met with resistance, however Unnikrishnan had collected aid from the alternative villagers who had been determined for exchange. The manufacturers, with declining call for and tiny approach to restart their undertaking, had been outnumbered.

Later the raids, Unnikrishnan would ask over contributors of the folk to play games chess.

“The game brought us together. We started talking about it more and more, and people would meet to play rather than drink,” says John, who tie investment from alternative villages to manufacture regional tournaments and effectively campaigned for chess to transform a part of the curriculum in each the decrease and higher number one faculties within the village.

“We truly started to piece together our lives around this beautiful board,” he says.

At his store, Unnikrishnan served the villagers no longer simply tea, but additionally his visual of a year distant of alcohol dependancy. And that, he informed them, might be finished thru chess, an historical recreation of technique believed to have originated in Bharat.

Quickly, nation engrossed over a chess board turned into a regular optical around the village.

In the meantime, instances of alcohol dependancy and playing started to say no within the village. Households, as soon as devastated via the bottle, rather huddled in combination round a chess board, competing towards family members for the tall of a checkmate.

“Before we knew chess, many [of us] were listless,” says Francis Kachapilly, a recovered alcoholic, as he stands along Unnikrishnan on the teahouse observing Jayaraj and John play games.

“We didn’t have a focus. Chess gave us something new.”

Unnikrishnan taught chess to just about 1,000 villagers and has himself competed towards grandmasters the world over. A number of younger gamers from Marottichal are competing the world over and inside of Bharat frequently.

In 2016, Marottichal used to be awarded a Common Asian Report via the Common Data Discussion board for the best selection of novice competition (1,001) taking part in chess at the same time as in Asia.

Unnikrishnan, now 67, is fondly “known to the people in Marottichal as our king and saviour”, says John.

Jayem Vallur (left), suffered a near-fatal road accident, and credits chess and his close friends Unnikrishnan (middle) and Baby John (right), with helping him mostly recover from the resulting paralysis [Mirja Vogel/ Al Jazeera]
Jayem Vallur, left, suffered a near-fatal highway strike, and credit chess and his alike pals Unnikrishnan, centre, and Child John, proper, with serving to him most commonly get better from the ensuing paralysis [Mirja Vogel/Al Jazeera]

‘Chess brought me back to life’

Not like playing, there may be virtually negative component of probability in chess.

The sport is deterministic – the participant who makes the most productive choice of strikes wins; and the principles and layout take away the chance to quote antagonistic statuses as excuses or blame malicious good fortune for losses.

Unnikrishnan is unenthusiastic to mention that the worth chess parks on making just right choices and averting malicious ones is simply chargeable for the aid in alcoholism and playing in Marottichal.

However he believes it had a “big impact”.

Internationally, chess has been instrumental in treating dependancy and mental and cognitive problems. In Spain, the game used to be integrated into rehabilitation programmes to regard drug, alcohol and playing dependancy. Extra lately, in the UK, psychologist Rosie Meeks argued that jail chess golf equipment helped to “reduce violence and conflict, develop communication and other skills, and promote positive use of leisure time” amongst inmates.

Few have felt the advantage of chess greater than Jayem Vallur.

The 59-year-old is vice chairman of Marottichal’s Chess Affiliation and considered one of its maximum motivated gamers.

Simply prior to midday on a groovy time in January at Unnikrishnan’s teahouse, he opens his fit with a beaming smile, and via the center recreation, he’s giggling infectiously along with his opponent. Items are exchanged over bawdy jokes at the black-and-white board among them.

Twenty-five years in the past, Vallur used to be combating for his lifestyles later he suffered a high-speed strike moment driving his motorbike. First responders peeled his dead frame from the street and i’m in a hurry him to the sanatorium the place he would spend two months hooked to life-support machines.

“Doctors told my family and friends that my brain had been severely damaged by the crash,” Vallur tells Al Jazeera.

He used to be totally paralysed to start with, however slowly started to regain motion in his decrease frame. Unnikrishnan and John had been amongst his closest pals and would spend hours beside his sanatorium mattress.

Later Vallur began to turn indicators of development in his accent, his pals would carry a chess board with them all through their visits. Quickly, his cognitive purposes started to toughen. Lately, simplest his proper arm is paralysed from the shoulder i’m sick.

Vallur believes the ordinary chess fits all through his fix helped. “Chess brought me back to life,” he says.

In 2023, Marottichal’s redemption attracted the eye of filmmaker and editor Kabeer Khurana, who directed a 35-minute movie, The Pawn of Marottichal, charting the village’s attempt with dependancy to its fix.

Khurana, whose movie is about for leave this 12 months, says he “sensed the enthusiasm, passion and energy of the people when he first visited the village”.

Again at Unnikrishnan’s teahouse, the noon video games are starting to wrap up. Vallur steps as much as the plate for a last recreation towards Jayaraj, who’s victorious once more.

“I taught his mother how to play,” says Vallur, smiling. “He is going to make the whole of India proud.”

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