Viswanathan Anand came back from virtual annihilation and conquered the world. His life has quite a few lessons on the art of winning
One night in July 2001, world chess champion Viswanathan Anand woke up with a start at his hotel room in Dortmund, Germany. He had been unable to sleep off the pain of going through the worst losing streak of his career. He was hovering at the bottom in the tournament in progress there but more importantly, his worst fears were just coming true.
He was staring at a long phase of poor form.
Unable to bear his suffering, Anand’s wife Aruna suggested that he hit the gym as a way to take his mind off chess. So at 4 a.m. before a big game day, Anand ran on the treadmill. It didn’t help. Forty five minutes later, he was back in the room still feeling dejected. She suggested they take a walk in the darkness, perhaps a fitting metaphor for their state of mind. Then they tried watching movies. Nothing worked. The child prodigy, India’s first grandmaster who had stormed into the dog-eat-dog world of international chess 16 years earlier and had every great legend of the game run for cover, had hit rock-bottom. Of course, he finished last in the tournament with four losses, six draws and no wins. “Till date, if anybody mentions Dortmund, it hurts us a lot because Anand was struggling as if he was making an extraordinary effort just not to lose,” recalls Aruna.
Tal Club had more members than it could handle. So, play was of the blitz variety. The loser must leave the table and take his place at the end of the queue. But Anand would keep playing because he would seldom lose. Perhaps it was this practice that made his reputation as the one who plays at the speed of light.
(This story appears in the 30 July, 2010 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)