Great week for Indian chess

Sitting out there in Spain, Vishwanathan Anand cannot but help smile as he mulls over the past fortnight's results in Indian chess. Some of his long-standing records have now become history, but, at the same time, it must be relieving to note that the trend he helped spark off in Indian chess has grown from a trickle to a torrent.

And, then, the question: Is the Indian chess base shifting from Tamil Nadu to neighbouring state Andhra Pradesh? What is clear is that the balance in world chess is tilting a little; and it is, noticeably, towards India.

Today, the official FIDE World champion is an Indian, as is the World junior women's champion. So also is the Commonwealth champion and a host of age-group World champions. Then, one has lost count of the number of Asian titles Indians hold or have won in recent times.

Leading the amazing pack in Indian chess are 15-year-old Pendyala Harikrishna and 14-year-old Koneru Humpy. Both hail from Guntur in Andhra Pradesh and possess enormous talent. Armed with nerves of steel and oozing with talent, they both made a brilliant charge in the last stages of their respective tournaments and emerged triumphant. Less than 48 hours separated Harikrishna's march in the Commonwealth championships, in London, and Humpy's brilliant recovery -- from a 11th round loss to victories in the penultimate (12th) and final (13th) rounds -- to the World junior crown in Athens.

In the process, the two youngsters erased quite a few firsts set by Anand. It took Harikrishna a few days more and a trip to London to realise that he had usurped Anand's record of being the youngest Indian GM, two years after he had taken the record of youngest Indian IM from the same genius. But the trip to London was not wasted, as Harikrishna became the youngest Commonwealth Open champion.

Just as the nation toasted Harikrishna, another Guntur prodigy kept the balance right for the women in India. Humpy won her last two games to tie for the top place and win the World junior crown. At just two months past her 14th birthday, which she celebrated on March 31, Humpy also eclipsed Anand's record, of being the youngest junior champion.

The championship is open to players up to the age of 20, and Anand was still five months short of his 18th birthday when he triumphed.

Interestingly, Anand won the title in 1987, the year Humpy was born. It would not be inconceivable to imagine Ashok Koneru, himself a good chess player, having big ambitions as he held five-month-old daughter Koneru and read the morning's newspaper savouring Anand's triumph in Baguio City, in The Philippines, then. On Wednesday that dream sort of came true.

Harikrishna, who became only the second Indian, after Anand, to win a World title -- he won the world under-10 title in 1996 -- arrived in London straight from Calcutta, where, a fortnight earlier, he became the youngest Indian to qualify for the FIDE World championships. Last year, at 14, he became the youngest Indian to play in the Olympiad, and he celebrated that achievement by earning his first GM norm.

Talking of his norm at the Olympiad, that was the one which gave him the GM title. After the Olympiad, he earned a second norm in Wijk Aan Zee in January this year. Earlier this month, at the Calcutta individual championships, when Harikrishna completed a third GM norm, albeit a ten-game one, neither he nor one any of the Indian arbiters had realized that he had completed his GM title.

The Indians were under the impression that Harikrishna needed 30 norm games -- as against his 29 -- but Stewart Reuben, the director of the Commonwealth championships, pointed out to the young Indian that his Olympiad norm counted as a round-robin norm, which meant he needed only 24 norm games., which Hari duly completed with his 10-game norm in Calcutta.

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Humpy on high!