My association with chess began in the summer of 1975. I was 12 years old and living in Lansdowne Court just across the road from Gorky Sadan.
My friend Arun Mitra took me to Gorky Sadan to watch a movie for the first time. And then he enquired whether we could be members of the Consulate library.
We got our membership straightaway and delved into brilliant Soviet publications. Some amazing large and colourful publications, magazines, and rare out-of-print books were available free of cost.
And then started my chess. I remember meeting Sanjay Somani (who later became the state chess champion), Bipin Shenoy (who became a leading chess coach in Bengal after playing in the state and nationals for years), journalist Devangshu Dutta, IM Neeraj Mishra (who was the second player in Indian chess who achieved the dual norms of International Master and International Arbiter) and Debashish Barua (now International Arbiter and the elder brother of GM Dibyendu Barua, with whom I broke many chess clocks in later years).
I also remember Kenneth Sinha, an avid cricket enthusiast and later a chess coach at Alekhine Chess Club. We all met in the library on the ground floor, borrowing chess books (Chess 64 and British Chess magazines), and of course, playing chess.
Soumen Majumder. (X)
There were a few other seniors like Bimal Mitra and Ananda Kumar Ghosh (who was then the current state champion) who would drop in often to check out chess books.
I remember my father giving me a princely sum of ₹2.50 (with which I bought five chess boards from GK Sports) and we then formally shifted to the south-facing verandah on the first floor of the old block.
There was no new block then — where the Alekhine Chess club was later shifted and the Goodricke Academy later formed. We started playing chess first during weekends and then three times a week.
Seeing our enthusiasm for the game, the thence Deputy Consul General suggested that we form a chess club. We readily agreed.
Thus was born the Alekhine Chess Club in 1985, though it was formally inaugurated in early 1986. That was the only chess club in the city in those years.
GM Dibyendu Barua and (right) GM Surya Sekhar Ganguly
Kamalesh Sengupta was our first secretary. Rajendra Singh (now a very popular school chess coach) helped with the administration in those early years apart from playing chess at the state and national levels.
Initially, we had about 25 members with a monthly subscription of ₹10. Subhankar Sinha, Nabin, Soumen Majumder joined in the early 80s.
The three of them, among many others, helped Alekhine become a major chess club not just in Calcutta but also in India (hosting numerous grandmaster tournaments starting with the Tata Steel meets in 1986 and in 1988, The Telegraph Schools’ Chess Championship and the Goodricke Academy).
Nearly all the grandmasters in Bengal have had some major association with the Alekhine Chess Club in various stages of their playing careers.
In 1979, the first major international meet was held and Aivar Gipslis, a GM of the erstwhile USSR, won the tournament.
In 1980, the Karpov Trophy was held where Verghese Koshy won. Shenoy, representing our club, finished a creditable sixth with a score of 8/11.
In 1985, Alekhine hosted the first rapid rating meet and three players from Alekhine obtained a rating.
The first Tata Steel Chess Tournament was held in 1986. Asoke Ghosh became the president of the club in 1985 and I was the treasurer for this big tournament.
GM Diptayan Ghosh playing for team Deggendorf in the Bundesliga in January
The Telegraph Schools’ Chess started in 1991 and was considered the longest-running school chess tournament in India. Many future International Masters and GMs had participated in this tournament.
The Goodricke Chess Academy started in the 90s.
The club had by then fostered a number of young talents, including GM Diptayan Ghosh (who won the under-10 Asian Chess in Turkey in 2008) and GM Sayantan Das (who won the World Youth Chess Championship U-12 boys in the same year).
Grandmaster Surya Shekhar Ganguly, GM Sandipan Chanda, GM Neelotpal Das and Woman Grandmaster Nisha Mohota were also part of the Academy.
Soumen was the backbone of the Alekhine Chess Club and the organiser of India’s first GM tournament for more than a decade — the Goodricke International GM tournament.
Soumen was also instrumental in organising various Asian tournaments and The Telegraph Schools’ Chess.
The tournament was the only school-level rating tournament for a long time in the country.
It eventually opened the gates to neighbouring countries like Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
I remember Dibyendu as a young boy who would drop in once in a while to play chess from 1977 onwards. In 1978, then 12 years old, Dibyendu became the youngest participant in the Indian Chess Championship.
Dibyendu participated in the World U-14 championship in Mexico in 1979 where he finished third and in 1980, he ended fourth in the World Sub-junior meet.
In 1982, Dibyendu defeated the then-world No. 2 Viktor Korchnoi in the Lloyd’s Bank Tournament in London.
In 1983, he became the youngest national champion, a record that was beaten by a few months by Viswanathan Anand in 1986.
He has since won it on two more occasions, in 1998 and 2001. He was given the Arjuna Award in 1983 after he won the nationals.
Dibyendu finally became a grandmaster in 1991.
Later he formed the famous DBCA (Dibyendu Barua Chess Academy).
I was later associated with DBCA as its director and helped Dibyendu run his academy for about five years before taking over as vice-president of the Bengal Chess Association, now renamed as the Sara Bangla Daba Sangstha.
Later, I had formed a Chess Academy at Future Hope (an NGO for street children) which was run by DBCA, Bipin and his wife Deepa Shenoy.
The late Professor Hari Vasudevan, a renowned historian and an authority in India-Russia relations, used to frequent Gorky Sadan in those early years and I remember meeting Hari on one such exhibition.
This was, of course, much later in the 80s.
Sayan Mukerji is a retired Chartered Accountant who now pursues his twin passions of chess and music.