Meleveetil Damodaran

I used to play chess quite seriously as a child. When I was 16, I participated in a tournament in Madurai [in Tamil Nadu]. I was up against a player who was ranked nationally. It was a long, tough game that was adjourned late in the evening and was scheduled to continue the next day. That night, I was up agonising over possible moves and my strategy for the next day. But, try as I did, I could not think of a way to defeat my opponent. Sensing that something was bothering me, my mother asked what the problem was. I told her the game seemed lost. My mother, who knew nothing about chess, asked me whether my opponent had won. When I told her that the game was still on, she wanted to know how I could have lost if the other person had not won. I didn’t manage to defeat my opponent the next day, but was able to hold out for a draw. The advice implicit in my mother’s observation has seen me through several situations, long after I stopped playing competitive chess.”