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| Viswanathan Anand with the FIDE world championship trophy in Moscow (AP picture), Shah Rukh Khan at the Eden Gardens felicitation for the Kolkata Knight Riders on Tuesday and the six-month-old joey and its mother at Alipore zoo (picture by Pradip Sanyal) on Friday |
Hello! Anand? Congratulations! Many, many congratulations! We are very proud of you.... Dibyendu is going to meet you... He will tell you everything. We are very proud of you. Congratulations!
Minister Madan Mitra paused a news conference at Writers’ Buildings on Friday to take a call from five-time world chess champion Viswanathan Anand and tell him how eager Calcutta was to felicitate him for a sterling achievement.
Mitra, who holds the sports and transport portfolios, was in the middle of explaining the government’s gambit to checkmate the bandh brigade with advance requisitioning of public transport when his cellphone rang.
The minister appeared reluctant to take the call, relenting only when his personal secretary whispered into his ear — the jury is still out on whether he said “Sir, from Russia with love” — and passed the cellphone.
Reporters looked on amused as Mitra’s frown quickly turned into paroxysms of delight on learning it was Anand on the line from Lenin land.
Bengal Grandmaster Surya Sekhar Ganguly, who is the only Indian second in the world champion’s support team, had apparently dialled Mitra’s number on Anand’s behalf to return a call that got disconnected before the duo could speak.
The minister later said that the state government was “very keen” to felicitate Anand and had already asked Grandmaster Dibyendu Barua, who visited Writers’ on Friday afternoon, to proceed to Chennai and invite the champion once he landed there.
Barua was the one who had called Anand from minister Mitra’s chamber at Writers’ after he told him of Mamata Banerjee’s wish to honour the champion with a bounty of “love”, just as Shah Rukh Khan and his victorious Kolkata Knight Riders were the other day.
Cash-strapped Bengal, of course, can’t rival the Rs 2-crore cash reward announced by Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa for Anand on Friday even if it wants to.
“We cannot afford to shower them with money, but we can give them our love and show them how happy we are at their victory,” chief minister Mamata had said of the Knights’ felicitation at the Eden Gardens on Tuesday.
The size of the crowd that had lined the streets for a glimpse of the Knights and those gathered outside Eden that day would have filled the 67,000-capacity stadium thrice over. Not that Calcutta needs prodding to turn out in large numbers for a celebration, be it of a victory by Shah Rukh’s Knights or the birth of a red kangaroo at the zoo.
Officials at Alipore zoo said the number of daily visitors had increased over the past week despite the heat, mainly to see a six-month-old joey prance about with its mother for company. The joey was born to the lone survivor among a batch of four red kangaroos brought from the Czech Republic in June last year.
While the kangaroo show is set to continue, there is no confirmation yet that Anand would be able to make it to Calcutta for a felicitation. The five-time world champion will be in Chennai for a few days — son Akhil has been staying with his grandparents while dad and mom Aruna are in Russia — before he leaves for Spain.
Grandmaster Barua, who is going to Chennai for the annual general meeting of the All India Chess Federation on Sunday, will formally convey Bengal’s invitation to Anand. “He is the greatest sportsperson in India. It will be a huge boost for chess in Bengal if he does come,” he told Metro.
Shah Rukh, Bengal’s brand ambassador and no stranger to Calcutta’s affections, would approve.
The Bolly star-turned-sports entrepreneur had said during a news conference in Mumbai coinciding with Anand’s world championship victory that no amount of praise was enough for his feat.
“It is a great achievement. I feel that this should also be celebrated in a grand way,” SRK said.
WHAT MADAN MITRA TOLD VISWANATHAN ANAND
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Hello! Anand? Congratulations! Many, many congratulations! We are very proud of you. Very good going. Keep it up. Keep going forward. I want to talk to you. Dibyendu is going to meet you. He is on his way. He will tell you everything. We are very proud of you. Congratulations!
