BENGALURU: While her father sat in the VIP lounge at the Lalit Ashok on Sunday, talking through what it means to be married to one of India’s most respected grandmasters, nine-year-old Ahana wasn’t interested in any of that. Her mind was only on the playing arena metres away, where Koneru Humpy and her team, APL Pipers, were fighting for the Global Chess League (GCL) title against the Ganges Grandmasters.As the pair was waiting for the match passes to reach them, she kept nudging her father, Dasari Anvesh, to take her closer, down from the lounge, into the hall, near enough to actually watch her mother play live. Remarkably, this was the first time in her young life she was going to see her mother play a competitive game of chess in person.“This is our first edition of GCL,” Anvesh told TimesofIndia.com, smiling as he recalled this was his second after a tournament in Russia. “We’re visiting physically, and the good thing is Humpy’s team is in the final. So it’s very exciting times.”Asked if she had a message for her mother before the match began, the shyness in the nine-year-old took over; she perhaps didn’t quite know what to say to someone she was about to watch, for the first time, not as a mother at home but as a competitor on a stage.It’s a distinction her father has lived inside for over a decade.Just this year, Humpy withdrew from the Women’s Candidates in Cyprus, the tournament that stands between a player and a shot at the World Championship title, citing safety concerns amid the tensions in the Middle East.“It was a collective family decision,” Anvesh revealed. “The time was not right. Whenever she wants to play any game, we always support her wherever she wants to go. But at that time, we all felt safety comes first, and we took that decision collectively, even though it was very challenging.”Humpy, he added, “stuck to that, and gave importance to family.”It’s the same trade-off that has run through their marriage since 2014, and deepened three years later when Ahana was born and Humpy stepped away from the board for a stretch.“Humpy is able to balance both sport and family,” Anvesh said. “Whenever there’s a tournament, she’s fully focused and playing for it. But whenever she’s out of the tournament, she always gives priority to family, spending time with me, with our kid.”
“As a mother, as a wife, she’s giving her hundred per cent. Family comes first, and then sport. Even when she was pregnant, she took a sabbatical. She has a lot of importance for family, and her passion for chess always drives her, it’s nice to see her balancing it so well.”He was quick to redirect any credit for her game away from himself. “I’m not a chess player. My father-in-law is the main coach who has trained Humpy,” he acknowledged. “All credit goes to him. I was the only one staying calm and offering emotional support.”
One result, two different reactions
On Sunday, Humpy’s team ended on the losing side. Stavroula Tsolakidou, playing Black, beat her in the decisive game that handed the title to Ganges Grandmasters, leaving Humpy and her Pipers side with silver.At the medal ceremony, Ahana and her father had the front-row seats, watching her mother step up to receive the silver.For Humpy, a player with close to three decades of medals in every colour, it will register the way these things always do for someone who has spent a career one step from the top. Another near-miss, a missed shot at gold on a competitive stage.For Ahana, sitting in the front row as the medal was placed around her mother’s neck, it didn’t register that way at all.Clapping alongside her father, she looked like she might lose her balance from sheer joy.She was perhaps not clapping for the silver medal. She was clapping because her mother had just finished playing and received a prize for that, live, in front of her, for the very first time. It must have been a whirlwind of emotions for her.Somewhere in that gap is the actual story of this final. Humpy, disappointed after the result, was hardly smiling. Ahana, however, was all smiles as she made her way out of the playing venue, clutching her father’s hand.
