To meet the star of their dreams: Viswanathan Anand

Viswanathan Anand, the world chess champion, played 30 simultaneous games at a school in India last month.
By VIKAS BAJAJ
Published: August 8, 2010

India Swoons Over Its Chess Champ, and Even the Game

NEW DELHI — The girls gathered in a school auditorium here on a recent Saturday were beaming with pride and nervous with anticipation. They would soon have a chance to meet the star of their dreams: Viswanathan Anand.

“I want to be the next Vishy,” declared Chetna Karnani, 16, referring to Mr. Anand by his nickname. “I practice four hours every day.”
Mr. Anand is no Bollywood heartthrob or pop singer. The idol the girls were swooning over was an unassuming, bespectacled, 40-year-old world chess champion.

Mr. Anand, who has held the world title for three years, appears to have earned the fame that India usually reserves for movie stars, cricket players and politicians. The girls had come to school on a Saturday with the hope of playing a game with him.

When he arrived with a retinue of four bodyguards to protect him from getting mobbed, the star-struck students sheepishly sought his autograph and peppered him with questions about his last title match, against the Bulgarian Veselin Topalov.

Historians say chess has roots in the ancient Indian games of chaturanga and shatranj, which were widely played here at one time. But chess has never taken hold in modern India. Mr. Anand is the first Indian ever to win the championship.

But Mr. Anand’s success — he was the world junior champion at age 17 and held his first world title at age 31 — has created a groundswell of enthusiasm for the game. Amit Varma, a popular Indian blogger, equated his impact here with the following Bobby Fischer created for chess in the United States when he defeated the Russian grandmaster Boris Spassky in 1972. “As I write these words, the day after his win, the newspapers and TV channels are full of him,” Mr. Varma wrote after Mr. Anand’s recent defeat of Mr. Topalov in a column for Yahoo India. “Chess, amazingly enough, might just be on its way to becoming a spectator sport in India.”

Here is the full article.