Memoirs of chess lessons learned in a tiny Bhutanese village

Divya Mallick
Nov 2 · 3 min read

Don’t be mistaken. I haven’t won any award at chess and I’m totally a novice at the game but I do know and understand its rules. My earliest memories of chess found their muse in a small village of Bhutan, Gedu, where my father was posted for a few years. It was the beginning of the 21st century and the word ‘travel’ was struggling to find its fame. Back then, travelling was a necessity for us. We travelled because we had to visit relatives, attend functions and meet our father who was posted in a different country which was less than a thousand kilometres away from the city. My only understanding of chess was Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand who had won the National Sun-Junior Chess Championship at the age of 14! I took it as merely a General Knowledge fact and I didn’t show any interest in learning an indoor game. But as fate would have it, I learned some of my life lessons through the 16 pieces of the two-player board game. Here’s how.

We were visiting Dad during our 2000’s summer vacation in Gedu, Bhutan. He worked as a manager in a plywood company and his factory was just 5 walks away from his petite yet well-organised stay. Around his house, lived locals and Indian workers who lived in tiny houses that didn’t stretch beyond two arm’s length. In the mornings, I’d climb to the colourful mountains and see their hues changing to blue, orange and green. I’d then go to a nearby stream, (which was probably a tributary of River Brahmaputra) with my father but the days were tougher. I’d nobody to play with and it bored me to death. My mother sensed this and introduced me to some friendly Indian subordinate workers who used to have a night shift. Hesitantly, I went over to their place one day and looked around. Suddenly, a black and white thing caught my eye. I picked it up curiously and discovered it was a chessboard. The workers offered me to teach the game and I reluctantly agreed. I was hallucinated by the pattern of 64 squares but the placement of 16 pieces had something for me.

Initially, I hated the idea of putting the weaker ones at the front. (I still do when I see soldiers backing up their king in war movies).

“It’s the small pawns that need to be shielded and not the King and Queen!” I demanded. “That’s up to the player to keep them protected. You should learn to play your pawns well, else you’ll lose the game in no time”, I got my answer.

Maybe, I didn’t realise the depth in those words then but now, I often compare those pawns with the little things in my life. How those things which might seem unimportant play an important role in our life? How minutest things, when strewn together, can make a difference? It’s all in the perspective, bigger or small, it hardly matters. You just have to ensure that you don’t end up becoming a pawn in anyone’s hand.

Learning the ‘rooks’ came easily to me. You see, it’s called ‘hathi’ in Hindi which means an elephant. A 10-year-old me could decipher why a fat rook can only move horizontally and vertically, unlike its dynamic neighbour ‘knight’ who could hop in an L pattern to its nearest blocks. In my mind, I was already making notes that I’ve to be flexible and fit in my life. I didn’t want to be like the fat rook then.

As the game proceeded, I worked on my concentration, saved the best and finest pieces by exchanging the unwanted ones and most importantly, I learned from my failures. I was on tenterhooks when I got a CheckMate first time but I managed to win the next game. Those mind-grilling hours in a small wooden cabinet are still the hazy pieces that I continue to hold to. Honestly, if I had a mobile phone then, I would have taken a nice snap of the moment and captioned the post as,

“Life lessons learnt from Dad’s subordinate staffs, in the game I always averted.” with a ‘Bhutan’ location tagged to it. (wink!)

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