Column

Sotto voce

It was an electric moment for chess lovers everywhere when Bobby Fischer landed in Reykjavík in Iceland to take on the existing world champion Boris Spassky in the world championship in 1972. There were no 24-hour channels frothing over with fake news stories, no internet, no relentless culture of celebrityhood, but we knew every little detail of what was going on in that faraway land.

On one side was the challenger, eccentric, petulant and demanding while on the other was the title-holder, serious, somewhat dour and patient. The media had immediately drawn allegorical parallels to the two systems whose citizens were facing each other: the fiercely individualistic Fischer who represented American values versus the stodgily conformist Spassky, from the dour and regimented Soviet side.

The truth, as it emerged many years later, was a bit more complex. Spassky was no party hack even if his country’s establishment was working overtime on his side, and as for young Fischer, while US officials were backing him up he had no time for them. Henry Kissinger himself had called him a few times urging him to go to Reykjavik but till the last moment there was no certainty that he would. To the governments of both sides it was a proxy Cold War battle.

We may never know whether Spassky saw it that way, but Fischer certainly couldn’t have cared less — he hated the communists but wasn’t particularly enamoured of his own people either.

But in 1972, the Americans were ready to overlook his eccentricities. The Soviet Union and its satellite states had dominated the game for years — from 1946 onwards the world champion had always been a Soviet citizen. Fischer, who had shown ample proof of his playing genius, was the west’s best chance to win the title.

We all know what happened — after a faltering start, Fischer crushed Spassky and walked away with the title. The Soviet monopoly was broken and a new star was born. The Americans celebrated the spirit of individuality — but it was not America but Fischer who had won.

One has to be a chess player to truly understand his genius. His games are pure poetry combined with logic, mathematical precision and ruthlessness. He talked about crushing his opponents and often did. Early on in his prodigal life, he played what is often called the ‘Game of the Century’.

At 13, in 1956, Fischer came up against American grandmaster Donald Byrne in a tournament in New York. In the 17th move, the teenager sacrificed his queen and in the 41st move, he had won. All budding chess players would do well to study it closely to see how the great man’s mind worked. What it tells us is that apart from being a good player who can see several moves ahead, it is necessary to take cold, calculated risks and go against conventional thought. It showed him, at an early stage to be a maverick.

What turned this genius into a man who railed against his own country, his own Jewish heritage and the world at large? Heclaimed that there was a conspiracy to kill him and that the Jews were destroying the world. He joined strange religious cults. He even went on air in a radio interview and hailed the September 11 attacks.

Yet he continued to have a tremendous fan following and was even given citizenship by Iceland, the country where he achieved his most famous triumphs because they thought he was being persecuted by the Americans because of his (outlandish) political views. Why does he have so many admirers even now?

It is because of the fine quality of his chess, true. But also because people tend to love mavericks, mavericks who do not conform to the world’s norms, who march to the beat of a drum only they can hear. When all around us we see stereotypes and people who seem to come out of the same cookie cutter — and that may well include ourselves — we yearn for those who are ready to discard all this and live the ascetic, reclusive life on their own terms.

Fischer must be seen in that totality - we may scorn his views, but we cannot but respect his elevated genius and his determination to carve out his own path. To be a chess player is to be, by nature, a bit lonely, in the manner of a writer or an artist. “Chess doesn’t drive people mad, it keeps mad people sane,” said a player once. In Fischer’s case, that certainly rings true.

Email: sidharth01@dnaindia.net