‘Stunning board’: How chess saved an Indian village from alcohol, playing | Well being

Marottichal, India – Telephones, wallets and half-drunk teacups litter empty tables – aside from one – at a teahouse in southern India, the place a crowd has fashioned round a chess board and two opponents.

One in all them is 15-year-old Gowrishankar Jayaraj. Surrounded by spectators vying for a view of the chess board, Jayaraj is competing blindfolded.

Taking part in blind from the sport’s opening means {the teenager} should visualise, keep and replace a psychological mannequin of the board, as strikes from each gamers are communicated aloud by a delegated referee.

Jayaraj is enjoying a a lot older Child John, whose expression is taut with discomfort. His shrinking shoulders and pursed mouth betray that he’s a handful of strikes away from dropping his fourth sport in practically 40 minutes.

“Gowrishankar is simply 15 and already one thing of a chess prodigy. He beats me even when he’s blind,” says John.

‘Chess Village of India’

Jayaraj and John are residents of Marottichal, a sleepy village of practically 6,000 residents situated on the foot of the Western Ghats within the picturesque Thrissur district of India’s Kerala state.

Within the early 2000s, Marottichal turned identified by the chess neighborhood in Kerala because the “Chess Village of India” as a result of at the least one particular person in each family right here is believed to be chess-proficient. Throughout the village, folks often sit throughout chessboards, competing within the shade of bus stops, exterior grocery outlets and on the playground.

“Greater than 4,500 folks right here – or 75 p.c – of the village’s 6,000 residents are proficient gamers,” says John, who can be the president of Marottichal’s Chess Affiliation.

Jayaraj is at the moment ranked inside India’s high 600 lively chess gamers, based on the World Chess Federation (FIDE), and hopes so as to add to India’s rising stature as a worldwide chief within the sport.

In September, India swept the Open and Ladies’s gold medals on the 2024 Chess Olympiad. Then, the nation’s youngest-ever grandmaster, Gukesh Dommaraju, 18, gained the World Chess Championship in December. And Grandmaster Koneru Humpy capped off a victory-laden 12 months for India after she gained the FIDE Ladies’s World Fast Chess Championship the identical month.

Jayaraj, who at the moment holds a 2012 score by FIDE, hopes to comply with within the footsteps of Indian heroes like Viswanathan Anand and Dommaraju, and turn into a grandmaster.

His dream displays the lengthy journey Marottichal has taken to interrupt from a popularity very totally different from the one it at the moment relishes.

‘King and saviour’

4 many years in the past, the village was within the grip of an alcohol dependancy and playing disaster that was pushing many households to the verge of destroy. 

Within the Seventies, three Marottichal households have been brewing nut-based alcohol for private consumption. However by the early 80s, the village had turn into a regional hub for illicit alcohol manufacturing.

“Individuals weren’t simply ingesting, they have been brewing and promoting liquor of their homes each night time,” Jayaraj Manazhy, a resident of the village – unrelated to Gowrishankar Jayaraj – tells Al Jazeera.

The commerce flowed between villages with Marottichal because the supply of the alcohol.

However farming households started to neglect their livestock and crops. With diminishing returns from the land, villagers quickly turned to playing by way of card video games on the liquor manufacturing homes, from the place bookies additionally operated.

An absence of standard revenue and the reliance on alcohol noticed many households fall into poverty.

“Younger youngsters have been left with out garments to put on. Others have been ravenous,” says one other native, who requested anonymity. There gave the impression to be no hope for an finish to the epidemic.

Till Charaliyil Unnikrishnan, an area resident-turned-exile, returned to Marottichal within the late Nineteen Eighties.

Unnikrishnan had been shunned by his household for becoming a member of a Maoist motion in his youth. He gave up the motion and returned in his early 30s to arrange a teahouse within the coronary heart of the village.

However the affect alcohol held over his village perturbed the previous insurgent. “It was a darkish time again then for our neighborhood,” he recollects to Al Jazeera.

Unnikrishnan determined to behave.

He assembled a small group of associates whom he had identified from his teenage years within the village and started networking with the wives and moms of the liquor producers who have been angered by their husbands and sons for spearheading manufacturing.

Over the course of months, Unnikrishnan obtained remoted tip-offs about brewing instances, which often occurred lengthy into the night time. Unnikrishnan and his associates would raid the homes the place alcohol was being produced and saved, destroying hidden provides and the gear used to provide it.

Generally, they have been met with resistance, however Unnikrishnan had amassed assist from the opposite villagers who have been determined for change. The producers, with declining demand and little means to restart their enterprise, have been outnumbered.

After the raids, Unnikrishnan would invite members of the neighborhood to play chess.

“The sport introduced us collectively. We began speaking about it increasingly more, and folks would meet to play reasonably than drink,” says John, who secured funding from different villages to create regional tournaments and efficiently campaigned for chess to turn into a part of the curriculum in each the decrease and higher major faculties within the village.

“We actually began to piece collectively our lives round this lovely board,” he says.

At his store, Unnikrishnan served the villagers not simply tea, but in addition his imaginative and prescient of a future freed from alcohol dependancy. And that, he informed them, might be carried out by way of chess, an historical sport of technique believed to have originated in India.

Quickly, folks engrossed over a chess board turned a standard sight throughout the village.

In the meantime, instances of alcohol dependancy and playing started to say no within the village. Households, as soon as devastated by the bottle, as an alternative huddled collectively round a chess board, competing in opposition to family members for the excessive of a checkmate.

“Earlier than we knew chess, many [of us] have been listless,” says Francis Kachapilly, a recovered alcoholic, as he stands alongside Unnikrishnan on the teahouse watching Jayaraj and John play.

“We didn’t have a spotlight. Chess gave us one thing new.”

Unnikrishnan taught chess to virtually 1,000 villagers and has himself competed in opposition to grandmasters internationally. A number of younger gamers from Marottichal are competing internationally and inside India often.

In 2016, Marottichal was awarded a Common Asian File by the Common Data Discussion board for the best variety of newbie opponents (1,001) enjoying chess concurrently in Asia.

Unnikrishnan, now 67, is fondly “identified to the folks in Marottichal as our king and saviour”, says John.

‘Chess introduced me again to life’

Not like playing, there may be virtually no aspect of probability in chess.

The sport is deterministic – the participant who makes the very best assortment of strikes wins; and the principles and format take away the chance to quote hostile circumstances as excuses or blame dangerous luck for losses.

Unnikrishnan is reluctant to say that the worth chess locations on making good selections and avoiding dangerous ones is solely chargeable for the discount in alcoholism and playing in Marottichal.

However he believes it had a “huge influence”.

Internationally, chess has been instrumental in treating dependancy and psychological and cognitive points. In Spain, the game was integrated into rehabilitation programmes to deal with drug, alcohol and playing dependancy. Extra lately, in the UK, psychologist Rosie Meeks argued that jail chess golf equipment helped to “scale back violence and battle, develop communication and different abilities, and promote optimistic use of leisure time” amongst inmates.

Few have felt the advantage of chess greater than Jayem Vallur.

The 59-year-old is vp of Marottichal’s Chess Affiliation and one among its most enthusiastic gamers.

Simply earlier than midday on a cool day in January at Unnikrishnan’s teahouse, he opens his match with a beaming smile, and by the center sport, he’s laughing infectiously along with his opponent. Items are exchanged over bawdy jokes on the black-and-white board between them.

Twenty-five years in the past, Vallur was combating for his life after he suffered a high-speed crash whereas driving his bike. First responders peeled his lifeless physique from the highway and rushed him to the hospital the place he would spend two months hooked to life-support machines.

“Medical doctors informed my household and associates that my mind had been severely broken by the crash,” Vallur tells Al Jazeera.

He was fully paralysed at first, however slowly started to regain motion in his decrease physique. Unnikrishnan and John have been amongst his closest associates and would spend hours beside his hospital mattress.

After Vallur began to point out indicators of enchancment in his speech, his associates would carry a chess board with them throughout their visits. Quickly, his cognitive features started to enhance. Right now, solely his proper arm is paralysed from the shoulder down.

Vallur believes the common chess matches throughout his restoration helped. “Chess introduced me again to life,” he says.

In 2023, Marottichal’s redemption attracted the eye of filmmaker and author Kabeer Khurana, who directed a 35-minute movie, The Pawn of Marottichal, charting the village’s battle with dependancy to its restoration.

Khurana, whose movie is ready for launch this 12 months, says he “sensed the passion, ardour and power of the folks when he first visited the village”.

Again at Unnikrishnan’s teahouse, the noon video games are starting to wrap up. Vallur steps as much as the plate for a last sport in opposition to Jayaraj, who’s victorious once more.

“I taught his mom methods to play,” says Vallur, smiling. “He’s going to make the entire of India proud.”