Set in the 19th century, Satyajit Ray’s timeless classic Shatranj ke Khiladi, while painstakingly chronicling Awadh’s annexation by the British, also scribbles a few delightful footnotes about chess cheating during those innocent days.
That world of chess boards made from cloth, hand-carved ivory pieces, paan-chewing players and their hookah gurgling opponents has no resemblance to the present-day chess ecosystem of sophisticated supercomputers that serve as “seconds” to both ethical and unethical players.
If the lead actors of the ongoing chess drama — the undisputed champion Magnus Carlsen and alleged cheater Hans Neimann — are chalk, the protagonists of Ray’s period drama — Mirza Sajjad Ali (Sanjeev Kumar) and Mir Roshan Ali (Sayeed Jafri) — were paneer.
Early in the movie, Sanjeev Kumar, raising his eyebrow like only he could, would remind his sweet-talking fidgety chess partner Jafri about “shatranj ka ek aaham usool (chess’s important principle).” In his famous drawl he would say, “If you touch a piece, it is obligatory to move it. In the last game you picked up the knight and moved the pawn.”
Towards the end of this tragic-comic tale, the nawabs, oblivious to the advancing “gori paltan”, are engrossed in yet another game. This time, it’s Sanjeev Kumar who breaks the rule. Certain to lose, he stoops low, takes to ugly gamesmanship. He chooses the end-game moment to update Jafri about his wife’s serial infidelity. It’s a classic, diabolical sledge — the kind one keeps hearing on stump-microphones on a cricket field — a clear violation of the chess’s yet another “aaham usool”.
Back in the day, chess cheating was rather juvenile, the kind cousins indulge in while playing board games during summer vacations. Sneaky illegal moves were common. A knight would be made to jump that extra square instead of moving from d2 to e4, it would venture to f4.
A 16th century chess legend, Ruy Lopez, advised players to sit in a way that the sun shines in the eyes of their opponents. Another priceless tip from another old master was about feeding the rival well since that would induce sleep.
In the 1920s, world champion Emanuel Lasker would smoke special foul-smelling cigars during games. He didn’t stop at that. Between moves he would blow smoke towards his rivals. The outraged tournament director would call it “a virtual gas attack on his opponent.” So was Lasker banned? Those were different times. As the book Art of Cheating in Chess says, “In those days, the right to smoke was considered more important than the right to breathe clean air.”
Chess would become more than a game after 1948, with the end of World War II. During the Cold War, the ancient game would turn into a geo-political tool. For the two nations with nuclear stockpiles of apocalyptic proportion — Communist USSR vs Capitalist USA —chess face-offs were an inexpensive and less-catastrophic form of war.
The USSR would mostly win. From the 1950s to 1990, they lost the world champion crown just once. Chess and the Soviet state were ideologically aligned, a perfect marriage. The masses were encouraged to pursue the game of logic and reasoning. It was a way to wean them away from religion. Chess GMs were the new demigods, they enjoyed state patronage. There were numerous stories of the secret service KGB moving the pieces from behind the curtains.
But the most bitter and notorious World Championship match wasn’t a USA-USSR affair. It was the 1978 duel in the Philippines between two Soviet GMs — one insider and the other defector. Anatoly Karpov vs Viktor Korchnoi had layers of deceit and ample conspiracy theories.
Karpov was the poster boy of Soviet chess, the living proof of the system’s success and their alleged intellectual superiority over the USA. Korchnoi, meanwhile, had stayed back in Amsterdam after a tournament and sought asylum. He felt that he wasn’t quite the blue-eyed boy in the country he was born in. A victory for the non-conformist, stateless Korchnoi would have hurt the USSR. An off-the-board Spy vs Spy game was about to start.
There are several accounts for this match, each adding a new colourful character. Where facts start and fiction ends is tough to say. According to one narration, Karpov, for his Manila trip, had 12 KGB men for company. Also in the team was a parapsychologist cum hypnotist who sat in the front row with instructions to stare at Korchnoi. There was also talk about Karpov’s wife delivering him a glass of orange juice at a particular time in every game — some say it was a bowl of yogurt. Be it juice or yogurt, both, it was said, had coded messages for Karpov.
Reports from the other camp too were equally juicy. There were reports that Korchnoi wore dark glasses to negate the hypnotist. His corner, believe it or not, had a couple of members of the Ananda Marg sect who wore saffron and red robes while sitting in a lotus position among spectators. Between games, they taught Korchnoi mental toughness and, hold your breath, even asked Korchnoi to pierce an orange by imagining that it was his opponent’s head.
After a marathon 32 games, with 21 finishing as draws, Karpov won. The champion would soon have a new challenger in Gary Kasparov — another rebel. The pot continued to simmer. In the 90s, the USSR disintegrated and the narrative changed. Kasparov would face the first chess-playing supercomputer, Deep Blue. Man vs Man would become Man vs Machine and this further evolved into a Machine vs Machine contest.
The only constant for this game is the cloak-and-dagger air about it. Those navigating the black and white squares need to be both clever and cunning, decisive and devious. That’s the charm of the game. Be it the days of Raj or these times of digital dramas around the Crown, what are kings, queens, knights and pawns without palace intrigue?