It was April 2014 and chess euphoria had gripped the sporting circles, as it has now following R. Praggnanandhaa’s exploits.
Only that the maverick in question then was not a pre-teen but a 44-year-old five-time World Champion, who had yet again risen from the dead, to stake claim to be the world’s best. Viswanathan Anand had just won the Candidates tournament in Russia to set up a re-match with the reigning World Champion, Magnus Carlsen, and I was deputed to cover his arrival press conference.
I was thrilled, for until then, I had not been entrusted with a bigger reporting responsibility. Second, it came at a time when I was still consumed by sports fandom and the immediate thought was of getting an autograph.
The press meet wasn’t along expected lines. The moderator took it upon himself to broach everything under the sun in a nearly 60-minute-long “conversation”. All the questions I had listed down slowly vanished into thin air. But curiously, each of the 20-odd journalists present there was offered a one-on-one interaction.
It didn’t matter that Anand hadn’t eaten much since morning. Neither did the fact that he had a three-year-old son waiting at home. I was pencilled in last and by the time my turn came, almost two hours had passed. It seemed like a cruel joke, both on him and me.
Anand rose from his chair thinking it was all over only to find me waiting. I introduced myself and five minutes later I was seated next to him at his breakfast table. “Go ahead with your questions,” he said. It instantly put me at ease. I even mustered the courage to ask a couple of clichéd questions. “A good result like this is like oxygen,” he said about getting his rhythm back. “There is more enthusiasm, more optimism and the emotions are all positive.”
The answers struck me. But I told myself that they couldn’t be much different from what 19 others before me would have heard. The next day I pored over other newspapers to see what I had done well and what I hadn’t. Nearly every reporter had a catchy quote for more or less the same set of questions. To this day, I haven’t come across many as articulate as Anand.
I completely forgot about the autograph. What I have, instead, is an experience filled with genuine warmth, something that I can cherish for long.