‘Beautiful board’: How chess saved an Indian village from alcohol, gambling | Health

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

One in every of 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, preserve and replace a psychological mannequin of the board, as strikes from each gamers are communicated aloud by a delegated referee.

Jayaraj is taking part in 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 positioned on the foot of the Western Ghats within the picturesque Thrissur district of India’s Kerala state.

Within the early 2000s, Marottichal grew to become recognized by the chess group in Kerala because the “Chess Village of India” as a result of at the least one individual in each family right here is believed to be chess-proficient. Throughout the village, individuals frequently sit throughout chessboards, competing within the shade of bus stops, outdoors grocery retailers and on the playground.

“Greater than 4,500 individuals right here – or 75 % – 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 present ranked inside India’s prime 600 lively chess gamers, in keeping with the World Chess Federation (FIDE), and hopes so as to add to India’s growing stature as a global leader within the sport.

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

Jayaraj, who at present holds a 2012 ranking by FIDE, hopes to observe within the footsteps of Indian heroes like Viswanathan Anand and Dommaraju, and turn out to be a grandmaster.

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

‘King and saviour’

4 a long time in the past, the village was within the grip of an alcohol habit and playing disaster that was pushing many households to the verge of smash. 

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

“Folks weren’t simply ingesting, they had been brewing and promoting liquor of their homes each evening,” 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 card video games on the liquor manufacturing homes, from the place bookies additionally operated.

A scarcity of normal revenue and the reliance on alcohol noticed many households fall into poverty.

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

Till Charaliyil Unnikrishnan, an area resident-turned-exile, returned to Marottichal within the late 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 group,” he recollects to Al Jazeera.

Unnikrishnan determined to behave.

He assembled a small group of buddies whom he had recognized from his teenage years within the village and started networking with the wives and moms of the liquor producers who had 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 came about lengthy into the evening. Unnikrishnan and his buddies would raid the homes the place alcohol was being produced and saved, destroying hidden provides and the gear used to provide it.

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

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

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

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

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

Quickly, individuals engrossed over a chess board grew to become a standard sight throughout the village.

In the meantime, circumstances of alcohol habit 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] had 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 nearly 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 frequently.

In 2016, Marottichal was awarded a Common Asian File by the Common Information Discussion board for the best variety of novice rivals (1,001) taking part in chess concurrently in Asia.

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

‘Chess introduced me again to life’

Not like playing, there’s nearly no aspect of probability in chess.

The sport is deterministic – the participant who makes one of the 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 choices and avoiding dangerous ones is solely chargeable for the discount in alcoholism and playing in Marottichal.

However he believes it had a “large impression”.

The world over, chess has been instrumental in treating habit and psychological and cognitive points. In Spain, the game was included into rehabilitation programmes to deal with drug, alcohol and playing habit. Extra not too long ago, 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 constructive use of leisure time” amongst inmates.

Few have felt the good thing about chess greater than Jayem Vallur.

The 59-year-old is vice chairman of Marottichal’s Chess Affiliation and one in every of 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 preventing for his life after he suffered a high-speed crash whereas using his bike. First responders peeled his lifeless physique from the street and rushed him to the hospital the place he would spend two months hooked to life-support machines.

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

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

After Vallur began to indicate indicators of enchancment in his speech, his buddies would deliver a chess board with them throughout their visits. Quickly, his cognitive features started to enhance. Right this moment, 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 habit to its restoration.

Khurana, whose movie is ready for launch this yr, says he “sensed the passion, ardour and power of the individuals 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 remaining sport in opposition to Jayaraj, who’s victorious once more.

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