Viswanathan Anand
In the month of “Chithirai”, 27th day, 2010 (for information about the Tamil calendar you can see the following link, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_calendar ) in Sofia, Bulgaria, Mother India danced with pride and in her forehead the rich and green Tamil Nadu shines with glory and its fresh fragrence referred to as Mother Tamizh is extremely proud of her son, Viswanathan Anand's unparalleled accomplishment in winning the world chess championship even more than when he was born.
For the past twenty five years and more, Viswanathan Anand has been making his country, India and his fellow Tamilians proud by his achievements and today I would like to write something about him in my sweet native language, Tamil.
Anand has defeated Topalov from Bulgaria to claim the world chess champion title for the fourth time in his career. At this auspicious occasion I am extremely happy that the chess.com website has given me a chance to write about this champion in his mother tongue.
This match consisted of twelve games and each game took about six hours between these two strong chess players. Thousands and thousands of viewers all over the world watched the games live online and enjoyed the match. At the end of the eleventh round the scores were tied at 5.5 each and that made the match even more nail-biting going into the last round. Even though Anand had the black pieces in the last game, he managed to play with the precision of a computer to capitalize on Topalov's mistake and win the world championship title in style.
The volcano which erupted in iceland recently had created a huge smoke cloud that stopped all flights in and out of Europe. Anand, Aruna and his team of seconds arrived in Frankfurt without having any idea about this major setback caused by mother nature. A flight journey that should not have lasted 2 hours, ended up being more than a 40 hour road journey in a van. Also there were so many of his supporters who did not approve of his decision to play this match in Sofia, Topalov's home town and they felt the match should have taken place in a neutral country. Anand's victory despite all these problems only reminds me of a beautiful poem by Mahakavi (meaning a great poet) Bharathiyar's poem which translates to
Even when the sky above is falling down, Never Fear!
Even when the whole world is against you, Never Fear!
I would like to share some of the turning points of the second half of the match.
[ed note: if you'd like to see every game from the event with GM Magesh's comments, go back through our daily news articles]
