THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: There’s a small experiment Viswanathan Anand says he plans to do one of these days. Place a chess set before his son and watch the consequences. "I have this idea of putting a chessboard and pieces in front of him and see what happens,’’ the world chess champion explained with a mischievous smile. And then as an afterthought; "At the moment, it is too early, though.’’ It should be. His son Akhil, who has entered Anand’s and Aruna’s life after 14 years of marriage, is barely three months old! "I will definitely teach him chess. But how far he will go, it’s up to him,’’ Anand said during an interaction after rolling out NIIT NGuru, an ICT solution for schools, at the Saraswathi Vidyalaya, Vattiyoorkavu here. The world chess champion, who is scheduled to defend his title against Israeli grandmaster Boris Gelfand in 2012, spent several hours at the school, where he was happily mobbed, photographed with and grilled by cheeky schoolchildren.At one point, the unsuspecting Emperor of 64 Squares came down a flight of steps and was instantly corralled by a clutch of giggling schoolgirls in traditional cream saris with jasmine flowers on their hair. He had to pose for photographs, of course.The current World No: 2 has come a long way from the day he won the national championship at age 16. In 2011, he is still the evergreen hero. The years and the countless mind battles have not whittled away at the youthful charm.On Wednesday, his day began with with a speech to the schoolchildren. He explained how chess was found a useful tool for improving academic scores and aided students to do better in maths and science. ‘’In chess, how do you upgrade your skills? You constantly go back, and try to adapt your skills to new needs,’’ he said.Anand said that he did not believe that chess was getting to be an expensive game, even at a competitive level. "I don’t think it is getting expensive. Even for coaching, I think it is relatively inexpensive. Chess requires no infrastructure. I think that’s one of the reasons that we’ve been able to roll it along,’’ he said. "We are trying to get kids play it in schools. It gives them something to look forward to...a couple of games every day.’’He said that the younger generation of Indian chess players was making remarkable progress. "They are on the right path,’’ Anand said.Anand finds parallels between chess and astronomy, his two loves: ‘’Both have become easy to practise. Now it’s easy to follow chess matches online. You can even play it online. Likewise in astronomy, earlier you had to spend lots of time with skycharts, set up the telescope, find the right view...there was lot of tedium involved. Now you have remote telescopes. You have the telescope at some place offering a clear view and all you have to do is plug in the co-ordinates and boom! There you have it,’’ he said.Anand gave away certificates to Siva Shankar Rama Rao, eighth standard student from Gowda Peta, Samalkot, who was adjudged winner of the southzone finals of the NIIT MindChampions Academy.
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