Column

Tales from the Locker Room

Vishy (Vishwanathan)Anand was born in Chennai on December 11, 1969. By the time he was three-days-old, he could sing in Tamil, dance in Hebrew, and paint in French. This obviously ensured that he was invited to all the neigbourhood functions where he was routinely the main act-except of course when there was the presence of the transsexual couple from Argentina who’d perform a fabulous act of synchronised skipping, something that Anand laments he cannot do even today.

Anand, by the time he was seven, had finished with school and college and was about to choose his university when he won the National Chess Championship. Thus began a long and glorious career, which culminated in his winning the undisputed World Chess Crown in Mexico City a few days ago.

Yes, of course the tournament was not without controversy, as Anand was about to deal opponent Peter Leko the coup de grace, (it’s a French soup), he spat out the routine challenge ‘Check!’ Leko, whose Bulgarian and Tamil remains a mystery, absurdly asked if he could pay by card. This confused Anand and both men were seen reaching for their wallets, until officials interfered by binding gagging and sedating Peter Leko (a very Mexican custom) and declaring Anand the winner.

This great victory brings us to the important question of how great will be Anand’s victory parade when he comes to Mumbai en-route to Chennai. I spoke to Prof. Ratankar Shetty who is in charge of victory parades in Mumbai (the professor also does weddings, banquets and children’s parties at much reduced rates). This is what the professor said to me.

“For victory parades, we have four categories based on Manu’s code of law or the present day caste system:
A) For batsmen we provide a 60- seater bus.
B) For bowlers we have a 40-seater bus.
C) For fielders there’s the 20-seater bus.
D) For tennis players we provide non-air conditioned van. However since Anand is neither a cricketer nor a tennis player. He will get the final category!”

Perplexed, I probed him further-this time for safety, with a long iron rod from a distance of eight feet.He explained, “Final category means ‘garland’. Will you please kindly give the garland to Anand at the airport, as I will be busy with Sreesanth’s mahurat of his new film in Kochi, when Anand arrives?”

So off I went to welcome the only genuine world champion we have, holding an old garland. However, as Anand got off the plane I had worse news for him. A few stops behind was the transsexual couple from Argentina!