Chess vagabonds blossom in the heart of commotion

Team Chronicle

Not often would you find a Sicilian Defence being so hotly debated or an aggressive move with the white Bishop chased so spryly amid the din and bustle of a busy road.

But for these maverick chess players every evening the world comes to a standstill as they engage their wits to win a battle in 64-squares smack in the middle of Gariahat crossing, with an aura of the knights from the medieval fiefdoms.

Gariahat junction, in South Calcutta, is one of the busiest crossings of the city with markets on either side of the roads and a slew of traffic moving up and down-stream, honking, snarling and racing bumper-to-bumper at any given point of the day. A flyover covers a major part of the skyline and it is in this little boulevard, that it creates, that our Satranj ki Khiladis hold court.

Asked how they focus amid so much of noise, prying eyes, smart comments, one of the old timers at the Gariahat Chess Club says, “We have learnt to shut out the world. For us the board and the chess pieces are the only reality, the rest doesn’t matter.

On how did it all begin, he tells, “Chess here was originally played by the hawkers in the evening. Slowly people from all walks of life joined and it grew. It’s for the love of the game and for popularising it that we are here.”

Many amateur chess players also spent their evenings here in the middle of the road playing the game. “Notable chess players of South Calcutta like Kunal Chatterjee, Dyutimoy Mukherjee, Sarbajit Adhikary, Himadri Biswas, Sanjib Burman, Subir Ghosh and others are a regular feature here,” he informed.

“This is perhaps the first open air chess club. We have no premises. We have no establishment. This piece of boulevard under the flyover is our cover and we play here everyday. There are years where we have played on all 365 days, that is even when Calcutta was flooded and there was the riot in CIT Road – Park Circus stretch to protest Taslima Nasreen’s presence in the city,” he said, clocking us straight back to the scene from Ray’s masterpiece Satranj ki Khiladi where the game progressed even with Awadh under attack.

So doesn’t the police create problem, “On the contrary some of the officers after their duty join us, both to play and learn,” he adds with a smile, “Everyone loves us.”

Sanjib Burman, a member of All Bengal Chess Association and a regular player here, added, “There is nothing to promote the game from grassroots. I learnt my trade playing in different paras (localities). As one folded up, a new one sprung and I kept moving like many of my friends. We are kind of chess vagabonds.

“I would love to see this club grow. Here, there are doctors, professors, librarians, businessmen, players, students and teachers. They talk chess, discuss victories, defeats and new moves. There is a culture for chess here. In fact we have a website www.gariahatchessclub.org that has a forum discussing issues based on chess,” he adds.

And as the neon lights and backlight glow-signs, which forms the source of light for the players beam down, this league of extraordinary gentlemen gets down to business with their pawns, rooks and cavalry shinning.