Knight in shining armour

Viswanathan Anand has won all the major awards in India, be it Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan, Padma Shri, Arjuna and Khel Ratna. He has also won the prestigious Chess Oscar, the international honour, several times so the Hridaynath award that he is scheduled to receive later this week in Mumbai, will be a welcome addition to all the metals and wood he has accumulated in his 30-year-old career as a sportsperson. 

The only difference is that this award has been won by eminent Indian personalities such as Lata Mangeshkar, Amitabh Bachchan, Hariprasad Chaurasia and AR Rahman, more like the Padma awards Anand has won. 

Anand, 46, is no longer the World champion but his legacy is that thousands and thousands of children in India take to the 64-square board fuelled by the success of their hero in the last three decades. The awards are only acknowledgements and his career cannot be condensed into a collection of such memorabilia. 

“I definitely value every award. Some are given for your performance, some for your sporting abilities and promoting your sport,” Anand said on the Hridaynath award. “I am always humbled by the appreciation I get. Chess is such an absorbing sport you don’t really take in much else. So I am always blown away.” 

However, there is one title he would keep closest in the midst of all these awards and that is the world title, which he won five times. It will take ages for another Indian to emulate his feat. Of course, he has sparked a chess revolution in the country and some of the mind champions who followed him have done exceptionally well. Bu there is only one Anand and he has done something on the world stage and that something cannot be easily surpassed.

Though he values all awards, Anand humorously recalls the function on the occasion of one of his first awards (Arjuna). “My dad insisted I wear a suit for my Arjuna Award. I agreed on the condition I could wear my new sneakers. Throughout the function my dad wasn’t very happy looking at my shoes. Even now he will recount, Akhil (Anand’s son) is like you, very particular about his things & strong willed...” 

And the most prestigious award that his World titles and his games over the board brought him was the Chess Oscar, which he won six times. “If you see the list of awardees ... anyone who has won it more than three times is definitely an all-time great,” says Anand and there is no need to emphasise that.

Whether he would go on to win the highest civilian honour (Bharat Ratna) is to be seen as the only sportsperson to bag it so far is Sachin Tendulkar.