‘Lovely board’: How chess saved an Indian village from alcohol, playing

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.

Considered one 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, keep 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 situated 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 particular person in each family right here is believed to be chess-proficient. Throughout the village, folks recurrently 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 % – 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 high 600 lively chess gamers, in keeping with the World Chess Federation (FIDE), and hopes so as to add to India’s rising stature as a world chief within the sport.

In September, India swept the Open and Girls’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 12 months for India after she received the FIDE Girls’s World Speedy 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 develop into a grandmaster.

His dream displays the lengthy journey Marottichal has taken to interrupt from a status very completely 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 dependancy and playing disaster that was pushing many households to the verge of damage. 

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

“Folks weren’t simply consuming, 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 via card video games on the liquor manufacturing homes, from the place bookies additionally operated.

An absence of normal earnings 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, a neighborhood 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 group,” he remembers to Al Jazeera.

Unnikrishnan determined to behave.

He assembled a small group of mates whom he had recognized 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 came about lengthy into the night time. Unnikrishnan and his mates would raid the homes the place alcohol was being produced and saved, destroying hidden provides and the tools used to provide it.

Typically, 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 group to play chess.

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

“We really 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 dependancy. And that, he informed them, may very well be performed via chess, an historic sport of technique believed to have originated in India.

Quickly, folks engrossed over a chess board grew to become 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 a substitute huddled collectively round a chess board, competing towards 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 nearly 1,000 villagers and has himself competed towards grandmasters internationally. A number of younger gamers from Marottichal are competing internationally and inside India recurrently.

In 2016, Marottichal was awarded a Common Asian File by the Common Data 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 folks in Marottichal as our king and saviour”, says John.

‘Chess introduced me again to life’

Not like playing, there may be nearly no component of likelihood in chess.

The sport is deterministic – the participant who makes the most effective 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 answerable 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 dependancy and psychological and cognitive points. In Spain, the game was included 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 “cut back violence and battle, develop communication and different abilities, and promote constructive use of leisure time” amongst inmates.

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

The 59-year-old is vice chairman of Marottichal’s Chess Affiliation and certainly one 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 together 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 motorbike. 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 informed my household and mates 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 have been amongst his closest mates and would spend hours beside his hospital mattress.

After Vallur began to indicate indicators of enchancment in his speech, his mates would deliver a chess board with them throughout their visits. Quickly, his cognitive capabilities 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 wrestle with dependancy to its restoration.

Khurana, whose movie is about 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 remaining sport towards 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.”