‘Sundar Board’: How chess saved an Indian village from alcohol, gambling. Health

Marottichal, India -Phone, wallets and half-intoxicated tea leaves disorganize the empty table-except in a tea house in India, where a chess board and two contestants have been crowded.

One of them is 15 -year -old Gaurishankar Jayaraj. Surrounded by the audience for the chess board view, Jayaraj is competing with blind.

Playing blind from the opening of the game means that the teenager should imagine, maintain and update a mental model of the board, as the steps of both players are loudly communicated by a specified referee.

Jayaraj is playing the role of a very large child John, whose expression is taut with discomfort. His shrinking shoulder and mouth believe in the mouth that he is away from losing his fourth game in about 40 minutes.

“Gaurishankar is just 15 and is already a prudent of a chess. John says, “When he is blind, he still kills me.

‘Chess Village of India’

Jayaraj and John are residents of Maroticha, a sleeping village of about 6,000 residents located in the leg of the Western Ghats in the picturesque Thrissur district of Kerala state, India.

In the early 2000s, Marotichala was known by the chess community in Kerala as a “chess village of India” because at least one person is considered chess-profit in every house here. Across the village, people regularly sit in a chesserboard, in the shade of the bus stop, outside the grocery stores and on the playground.

John says, “Out of 6,000 village residents, more than 4,500 people – or 75 percent – are skilled players.”

According to the World Chess Federation (FIDE), Jayaraj currently ranks in India’s top 600 active chess players, and expects India to add to the growing stature as a global leader in the game.

In September, India opened in 2024 chess Olympiad and was swept away by women’s gold medals. Then, 18 -year -old Gukesh Domraju, the country’s youngest Grandmaster, won the World Chess Championship in December. And Grandmaster Konaru Hampi faced a win -filled year for India after winning the Fide Women’s World Rapid Chess Championship the same month.

Jayaraj, who currently holds a 2012 rating by Fide, is expected to follow the footsteps of Indian heroes such as Vishwanathan Anand and Domraju, and becomes a grandmaster.

His dream shows the long journey that Maroticha has taken to break with a reputation which is currently different from that time.

‘King and Savior’

Four decades ago, the village was in the grip of a liquor addiction and gambling crisis, pushing many families to ruin.

In the 1970s, three Marottichal families were drinking walnut -based alcohol for personal consumption. But in the early 80s, the village had become a regional center for illegal liquor production.

“People were not just drinking alcohol, they were drinking alcohol in their homes every night and selling alcohol,” the village resident Jayaraj Manazi – Gaurishankar tells Jayaraj – Al Jazeera.

As a source of alcohol, trade flows between villages with Maroticha.

But agricultural families started ignoring their livestock and crops. With low returns from the ground, the villagers soon converted into gambling through card games in liquor production houses, from where the bookies also operated.

Lack of regular income and dependence on alcohol saw many families falling into poverty.

“Young children were left to wear clothes. Other people were dying of hunger, ”another local says, who requested oblivion. There was no hope for the end of the epidemic.

Until a local resident-resident-resident-Anikrishnan, he returned to Maroticha in the late 1980s.

Unnikrishnan was tampered with by his family to join a Maoist movement in his youth. He left the movement and returned to establish a tea house in the village’s heart in his early 30s.

But the impact on his village disturbed the former rebel. “This was a dark time for our community,” he remembers Al Jazira.

Unnikrishnan decided to work.

He gathered a small group of friends whom he knew in his teenage age in the village and started networking with wives and mothers of alcohol producers who were angry with their husbands and sons for production.

During the months, Unnikrishnan got a separate tip-off about the time of making alcohol, which was usually longer at night. Unnikrishnan and his friends raided houses where liquor was being produced and stored, the hidden supply was destroyed and the equipment used to produce it.

Sometimes, they used to meet with resistance, but Annikrishnan was supported by other villagers who were desperate for change. Producers, with a decline in demand and re -starting their enterprise, were excluded, with very little means.

After the raid, the Unikrishnan will invite members of the community to play chess.

“The game brought us together. We started talking about it more and more, and people will meet to play instead of drinking, “John says, who received money from other villages to create regional tournaments and successfully campaigned for chess and both lower And primary school in the village to be part of the course in both upper.

“We actually start doing our lives around this beautiful board together,” they say.

At his shop, Unnikrishnan not only served tea to the villagers, but also his vision of the future free from alcohol addiction. And, he told them, can be done through chess, it is believed that an ancient game of strategy was born in India.

Soon, the people engrossed on a chess board became a common scene in the entire village.

Meanwhile, cases of alcohol addiction and gambling in the village began to decrease. The family, once destroyed by the bottle, tickled together around a chess board, competing against loved ones for high of a checkmate.

“Before we knew the chess, many (among us) were listless,” Francis Kachpili is an alcoholic, as he stands with Annikrishnan in the tehouse while looking at Jayaraj and John Play.

“We did not have a focus. Chess gave us something new. ,

Unnikrishnan taught chess to about 1,000 villagers and competed against themselves internationally against Grandmasters. Many young players of Marottichal are competing regularly internationally and within India.

In 2016, Marottichal was awarded a universal Asian record by the Universal Records Forum, which was for the largest number of amateur contestants (1,001) who were concurrently playing in Asia.

John says, now 67 -year -old Annik Rrishnan is “known as our king and savior in Marotichala”, John says.

‘Chess brought me back to life’

Unlike gambling, there is almost no element of chance in chess.

The game is fixed – the player who creates the best collection of the moves win; And the rules and taps cite adverse conditions as an excuse citing adverse conditions or blames poor fate for damage.

Unnikrishnan is reluctant to say that the price chess is in place of making good decisions and avoiding bad ones, which is completely responsible for alcohol and gambling reduction in Marottichal.

But he believes that it had a “big impact”.

Worldwide, chess addiction and psychological and cognitive issues have played an important role. In Spain, sports were included in rehabilitation programs to treat medication, alcohol and gambling addiction. Recently, in the United Kingdom, psychological Rosie Meux argued that gel chess clubs helped in prisoners “to reduce violence and conflict, develop communication and other skills and promote positive use of holiday time.

Some people have felt the benefit of more chess than Jayam Vallur.

The 59 -year -old is the vice -president of the chess association of Maroticha and one of its most enthusiastic players.

On a quiet day in January at the tehouse of Unnikrishnan, before noon, he opens his match with a smile, and from the mid -game, he is laughing infectiously with his opponent. Between them, pieces are exchanged on the stepwell jokes on black and white boards.

Twenty -five years ago, Vallur was fighting for his life after facing a high speed accident while riding his motorcycle. The first respondents peeled their lifeless body from the road and rushed it to the hospital, where he was tilted for two months of life-support machines.

“The doctors told my family and friends that my brain was severely damaged by the accident,” Valloor tells Al Jazeera.

He was perfectly paralyzed at first, but gradually began to regain movement in his lower body. Unnikrishnan and John were among their closest friends and spent hours near their hospital bed.

After Vallur showed signs of improvement in his speech, his friends will bring a chess board with him during his visits. Soon, their cognitive works began to improve. Today, only his right hand is paralyzed below the shoulder.

Vallur believes that regular chess matches helped during his recovery. “Chess brought me back to life,” they say.

In 2023, Mochan of Marotichala attracted the attention of filmmaker and writer Kabir Khurana, who directed the 35 -minute film, The Pon of Maroticha, who charts the village struggle with his recovery addiction.

Khurana, whose film is ready to be released this year, says he “felt the enthusiasm, passion and energy of the people when he first visited the village”.

Back to Unnikrishnan’s tehouse, the mid -day games are wrapping. Vallur steps into a plate for a final game against Jayaraj, which is again victorious.

“I taught her mother how to play,” Valloor says, smiling. “He is going to take pride in the whole of India.”