Anuj Shrivatri: A chess dream that travelled a generation

As a university student in Bhopal, Ashok Shrivatri and his friends carried chess pieces in their pockets. The boards were already waiting for them. One of his friends had painted chessboards onto four classroom desks. Long after classes ended, the boys stayed behind, hunched over the desks, playing for hours. Sometimes, their worried and increasingly irate parents would turn up looking for them. The boys had a familiar escape: they ducked under the desks, hiding from their parents, reluctant to abandon their games.

“Back then, chess was seen as gambling. Many parents worried that their children would end up selling off family assets and businesses and bring their families to ruin. My friends were regularly beaten by their parents for playing chess. My parents, though, didn’t mind me playing. Of course, in those days neither did we have the means nor the know-how to pursue chess professionally. We played because we loved chess,” Ashok told HT.

Once he was out of university, chess faded from Ashok’s life. He took up a government job, and soon had a family to raise.

On Sunday, his 22-year-old son Anuj became India’s 100th grandmaster. And Madhya Pradesh’s first. Anuj won the 7th ASEAN Plus Individual Open Championship in The Philippines. It earned him the GM title.

His initial feeling was one of “relief”.

“It’s just been on my mind for such a long time that to finally get it out the way felt good,” Anuj, who had one GM norm and a peak rating of 2483 before he earned the title, told HT.

One of the first persons he called up was his father, now a railway school teacher in Jabalpur.

“I introduced chess to both my sons. My older son stopped playing after a while but Anuj wanted to continue. I had the belief he would make something of it. Whether it’s a chess book he wanted to buy or a tournament he wanted to play, I always said yes first and then figured out how to pay for them,” Ashok said.

The family today is scattered across cities. Ashok lives in Jabalpur, and his wife, a state government school teacher, in Bhopal. Their older son is in Bengaluru. Anuj, though based in Bhopal, largely lives out of a suitcase, travelling from one chess tournament to another.

Born in Katni, Madhya Pradesh, Anuj pursued a BTech degree and completed a year's remote internship with a German firm. At the end of it came a job offer. A regular salary, and a career as a software engineer, lay before him. He turned it down. Chess, with all its glorious uncertainties, was what he chose.

“It was a very difficult decision at that time,” Anuj said, “because I wasn't certain how long it will take me to get the GM title. It feels justified now.”

His first coach, BK Tiwari, died during an Under-9 tournament in Ahmedabad. Suddenly, a young Anuj was without a coach. Though he trained under others, for long stretches he had no full-time trainer.

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“I learnt to rely on training regularly at home, sometimes training and analysing with friends and learning from my mistakes. I used Chessbase, apart from chess books and courses from Chessable and Modern Chess. I also had some sessions with GMs Vishnu Prasanna, Swayams Mishra and Swapnil Dhopade, which helped me to grasp new aspects of the game.”

There was some institutional help along the way. After Anuj finished fourth at the Under-14 World Youth Championship, Indian Oil Corporation (IOCL) sponsored him for three years. Once that support ended, he was largely on his own.

“I combined playing rapid tournaments in India along with coaching youngsters to fund my journey,” he said. “I trained around 10-15 students rated between 1800 to 2300. I plan to continue coaching.”

Teaching chess, he discovered, also made him a better student of the game.

“When you see your students make mistakes, you need to come up with the best process to make sure it's not repeated, which helped me as well while playing.”

And so the game travelled a generation.

For Ashok, life seems to have come a full circle. “It’s nice when your child ends up living your dream.”