Dreaming Knights Day and Night

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Chess became a very relevant topic for everyone few months ago when India won the Chess Olympiad for the first time in history sharing the first place with Russia. It has been a great year for the chess community. The stand up comedians of India started to play chess when the lockdown initially started and everyone thought it will be of 21 days only and then for the first time we had a non chess player streaming chess on YouTube in India. People were able to connect with the comedians as not everyone understands the chess language: knight f3, c6. Also around this time only Netflix released their original series Queen’s Gambit which resulted in a lot of people stepping out of their homes to buy chess boards, according to a report chess board sales were increased by 300%.

Knight hallucinations

Chess is a very unique sport because unlike other sports when you lose a chess match from someone not only you get sad but it feels like an insult. Thoughts start to cross your mind that the other person is smarter than you. When you start playing the chess matches regularly you get so involved that there comes a stage which I like call Knight Hallucinations. At this point you can think of nothing else other than your next move and on and on.

Photo by Engin

Even though you are not playing a match but those moves just keep coming in your head again and again. You can’t remove the position in which you were losing, from your head. And it does not stop there, last thing you will think before sleeping will be a chess move in a random position in your head and finally when you manage to sleep it continues in the dream. Okay let’s say for once you had a sound sleep and didn’t have any of those chess positions in your head then the first thing you will think of after waking up will be a knight moving across the chess board.

At this point you realise that you need to take a step back and let things be normal for a few days until it all goes away. From my personal experience I can say that this stage will come for everyone once they start loving the game, because there are so many lines and theories in the game, there are millions of those that you want to memorise to get better at the game and to do that one must play thousands of games and atleast five or more games in a day. And once you have learned enough lines and theories it all starts to settle in your mind. And I believe you can never stop playing this game once you get in love with it.

To end my blog here I would like to quote the Chess World Champion, Magnus Carlsen : “Chess should not become an obsession.Otherwise there’s a danger that you will slide off into a parallel world, that you lose your sense of reality, get lost in the infinite cosmos of the game”

Social Distancing – the new normal

With over 10 million cases of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) across the world, states are battling the most severe public health emergency in a century. The most preferred route to this is lockdown , they are not the best way but it gives us an opportunity to break the chain.

Everyone has mixed feelings about the lockdown , some feel it has been a wonderful experience for them to spend time with their families and some feel suffocated to be at their homes 24/7. Its not bad to feel either way. Some people took time from their schedule to learn new things and some just want to enjoy their time by binge watching series on Netflix. Overall my social interactions are almost over, there is only one friend who I have met throughout this lockdown. Before all this my most of day was spent outside the house literally it was like I used to come home for food and sleep.

My whole schedule has changed these days, earlier I was mostly outside the house and now I am mostly not even outside my bed. Its like sleep has taken over my life and its the only skill I am left with. And by the way, why doesn’t anyone talk about the problems faced by people wearing masks and the spectacles at the same time. We really need to talk about that.

For now we can just wish that this ends and everybody can get back to their normal lives. One thing is for sure that this wont be happening anytime soon. The end of the lockdown will not lead to normalcy, but will create a “new normal”.

What the lockdown has taught me

This lockdown has been a learning phase for everyone. Everyday seems like just another Sunday which does not seem like a relaxation now. There used to be a time when we all just wished for a Sunday everyday but now when we all have got that we just want our normal lives back. I personally want to go back to school and meet my friends even if that means getting scold everyday from teachers because that seems like a big privilege now.

I for one am an ardent fan of street food and used to eat that almost everyday with my friends after my evening tuitions. I haven’t had bite of that for a long time now and I am not actually missing it as much as I thought I would be when the first lockdown started. Now that everything is not readily available I have learnt to live with less, not just me this lockdown has taught people to live with less, now less is more.

Many have picked new hobbies in this time  and and many have continued with their old ones. I have picked chess as a new sport and hobby for me and all I think now is about chess, I never thought that it can be a really interesting sport. Given the situation I observed that chess is the only sport which is still going on throughout the world. The matches are still being played online and it’s been really fun watching them and following chess. It has taught me patience. In fact lockdown has taught us that patience is really important because it looked like patience was a lost virtue. 

This lockdown has taught me that I can’t take anything for granted now. Our lives will never be the same after this. There might be not a lockdown forever but it’s effect is gonna be there for a long time, people won’t be able to meet and greet each other the same way we used to. Our social interactions are gonna be affected. The restaurants and bars are still going to be there but the way they used to work its gonna be different.

The most important thing the lockdown has taught as an Indian is the importance of a good balcony.

#stayhomestaysafe