On a chessboard in Goa, it was a beautiful November afternoon as something familiar appeared. Wei Yi, the world’s sixth-ranked Indian grandmaster, destroyed his Chinese counterpart. Epicaisi was playing on his own soil and enjoyed by the students who crowded around his board in a snoring haze. The game was already in progress as soon as he moved his pawn to the center of the board and pressed the “dual-timer chess” button.
Grandmasters rise as effortlessly in this nation where chess was first practiced as coconut trees grow along the coast. A child’s early life begins with a game that teaches them to plan or, more likely, to endure, slipping through the cracks of cramped, overworked working-class homes and classrooms. That’s how chess entered my world at least. Without having money to pursue higher education and having a temper that kept him between jobs, my brilliant Periappa (uncle) frequently ended up taking care of me. When he gave me my favorite inheritance, the game of chess, at the age of six, I must have been six.
I can still recall Periappa declaring, “These are my favorite, holding a chipped, toy-sized plastic knight in front of me.” If you learn them, they can be deadly. I was certain that I would always want something. Chess became a sensation in my life rather than a pastime. Chess was a pheromonal relationship for me.
When Periappa sat me down for a game, I was a difficult, friendless child who was prone to sulk. I anticipated victory. What kind of adult enjoys beating a six-year-old? Periappa would throw the game because he loved me, persisted everything I knew about life. But that was not the love he had. Chess is not that particular game, either. Both were based on strategy, not mercy.
No one loses at this game, he said in my first chess lesson. You instruct someone, or you learn something. Of course, I was prepared to take no lessons. I threw a fit, then I threw the pieces, sobbed a little, and never entered chess. It was brief if I had a chess career. I can recall winning a neighborhood tournament before being distracted by life, boys, and school, stumbling away from both my uncle and chess.
He had passed away by the time I had to play chess.
Perhaps I was brought back after his death. I could only be near him if I played chess on a board. I stayed this time. The chessboard served as my only source of escape from life’s uncertainty when the pandemic washed ashore. With his voice in my head, I had to wrestle with myself.
Soon enough, you develop a style, much like writers do when they start to develop a voice. Bobby Fischer was well-known for his devotion to bishops. In the middlegame, Garry Kasparov’s rook activity was fatal. One of the greatest players of the moment, Magnus Carlsen, is renowned for being a very active king in endgames. Because one of the few players who doesn’t give a damn about the outcome, Epicaisi is known as the “madman on the board.” He becomes dangerously precise and reckless as a German sniper as a result. However, all that happens happens when things go according to plan.
They disregarded it. With one minute left in the Erigaisi-Yi game, Erigaisi blundered his rook. He repeatedly made moves that gradually weakened his position at that time. I watched him lose piece after piece as he was sat in the middle of the playing hall, between two rows of spectators, with a notebook on my knee. He was unable to leave the animal until it had broken down.
The kind of theatricality that keeps fans glued to it was present.
As an amateur chess player for decades, I’ve learned that the addiction rarely stems from the game in its entirety, but rather from a few moments, such as the rigorous, disciplined violence of the Erigaisi-Yi match or the obsession with a single piece. It was the knight, in Periappa’s opinion. Zugzwang is what holds things together, in my opinion. A player has to move in an endgame, but every move they make weakens their position. They are unable to turn around or pass. There is no relief on the board, but there is. I’ve spent years attempting to understand zugzwang in an effort to understand how my relationship with Periappa ended.
We used to communicate easily when we were younger, which is a challenge that people still face today. However, as a child, the geometry of proximity changes, and I began to notice his flaws. He had a difficult husband and father, and his views on my education, boyfriends, and even chess were unwelcome. No single rupture occurred; it was a gradual accumulation of delayed calls and visits until there were fewer and fewer topics to discuss. I watched him in excruciating pain in a Bombay hospital with nothing to say or do at the conclusion of our relationship. We had already slid into separate corners as pieces drifting into an endgame and locked ourselves into an emotional zugzwang of our own creation by the time he passed away.
In the hope of tying a neat bow of chess wisdom over the ominous turn of events, I studied zugzwang after he passed away. The “immortal zugzwang” between Aron Nimzowitsch and Friedrich Saemisch in 1923 is something I can spend hours reading and watching. Because of the fact that white is completely tied up in the final position and makes no mistake about it, it is one of the most well-known chess matches ever. Total board-wide paralysis, as if Nimzowitsch had encased Saemisch’s pieces in invisible wire. No checkmate is necessary, just the humiliation of defeat itself. The only way out is through inevitability, not spectacle.
The grief did not end after Periappa’s passing; it persisted. I regret never explaining to him that Mount Everest was now my personal Mount Everest after mastering the knight. I regret that he passed away without realizing that I, in fact, loved knights. that my childhood contained a deep, reptilian portion of my brain that the knights had curled up in. That one small preference, which was casually passed down, endured more than our conversations ever did. There is no hidden significance here. In fact, I believe there is no purpose to it. That might be the only things that relationships still have, such as unused charging cables or expired email accounts.
It teaches me new things every time I go back to Zugzwang. Deep endgames, when every choice hurts, are the lessons that still bother me these days. I can still see the outline of a chipped plastic knight standing up to me and urging me to choose, but Zugzwang turns into a mirror.
