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| An example of early-style Staunton Chess Set (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Chess was invented in India. Study the characters involved on the 64 square battlefield, and it becomes even more clear that it could have only come from the land which gave us B. R. Chopra's "Mahabhaaaarat".
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First there are the soldiers ('pawns' just doesn't have the right ring to it), the sipahis who will happily become sword fodder for the glory of their maharajah. "Jo hukum (As you wish), Maharaj!" is what would be expected of these little guys who move only one square at a time and make up half of the respective leader's troops, 8 each on the black and white sides.
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Next in the line of "I can afford to let this piece get captured" is the Bishop, whose behaviour makes much more sense when called by his Indian name, the ooth (the camel). For anyone who's seen a camel in real life knows that they look like big sturdy beasts built to go for days without water with a load on their back. What the animals can't be accused of is looking too intelligent. Hence their crazy diagonal only moves on the chessboard do match up to their projected mental capabilities.
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By this point in the write-up, it would be easy to guess that yours truly likes to call the Knight ghodaa (the horse) and the Rook haathi (the elephant) as they deserve to be called. Why go for boring things like humans and chariots when some really cool animal avatars are up for grabs?
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The horse is a noble beast with or without a knight in charge of it. Powerful, athletic and quite able to jump over a scared sipahi or two. There we have the basis for the nothing's-gonna-stop-us-now moves of the horses, the only pieces on the chessboard capable of ignoring obstacles in their way.
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According to this writer, elephants are quite possibly the most fascinating animals for a variety of reasons. They are intelligent, long lived and with great memories but again the one thing they can't be accused of is being steering friendly. Once they start moving, they keep charging and in that same direction. Thus the ninety degree or straight line moves that they bust out on the chess squares is quite realistic in my humble studied-no-biology-beyond-12th-grade opinion.
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The royal couple are the final twist to this cast of characters begging to let free on the checkered board of life. A few thousand years old this game may be but the most powerful, vicious, kick-ass presence on the entire board is that of two women. The respective Queen is a terror in every sense of the word to the opposing side. She can attack in any direction she wants to and speed as far as there is a clear straight path. Diagonals don't hold her, she can be as crazy as a camel and she can be as angry as an elephant too. Though the primary objective of the game is to protect the lame duck King who moves only one square at a time, there is no doubt on who wears the pants at home.
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Put all of those together and every game of chess is a epic war movie in the making. Heroic soldiers, little men put into history changing moments by planning and circumstances one measly step at a time. Horses guarding camels; camels guarding horses; horses and camels guarding soldiers; queens and elephants guarding those horses and camels - you get the idea. There is death (capture), there is sacrifice, there are traps and there's fighting like a cornered rat, there's great escapes and moments of mind numbing stupidity. All within the confines of a 8x8 universe.
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Yours truly is always looking for excuses to justify his obvious lack of talent in chess playing. This is as close to the truth as excuses can get. Yours truly is a day dreamer. He dreams of one day beating his smartphone at level 12 and how gloriously his troops shall march before cornering that opposing king in a position of no escape. He hears the cheering of his kingdom's common folk as the match begins, meticulously plans for the lives of each of his team soldier level upward. Every soul is precious and every loss must be paid for in blood.
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Then the opposition arrives on the battlefield, better planned and better prepared, trying to do the exact same thing. They almost always invariably win. Usually a soldier goes first... unavenged, as payback means the death of one of my horses. Soon things start to turn from bad to worse. My team is trapped, sometimes behind their own team-mates as the opposition master-plans kick into place. The real moment of heartbreak comes when one of my elephants is trapped. I see it in my mind, falling to a thousand pesky little arrows, trumpeting its defiance even as it bravely makes its final stand as moving means exposing his king to a fatal situation.
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The death of an elephant is something very difficult to overcome. If things were going downhill so far, they go absolutely haywire from here on in. Attack, attack, attack with flashes of red revenge and the clashing of justice delivering swords. Blind anger was never a friend of the successful army and so it comes to pass that soon my king is out there in the open with nowhere to hide. Bitter as it feels, surrender one must and promises to never put oneself through this trauma again are made.
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Soon enough though, sometime in a day's time, sometime in a week's and sometimes even in a month depending on how bad the previous defeat was, the game is on again. There are plans renewed, mistakes recognized and dignity half restored. The kingdom must fight, the kingdom must live and the kingdom must win. Defeat is very likely to say hello again but even a tragedy makes for beautiful viewing if the story is grand and it plays in the mind's real 3D.
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