d4, d5, c4, e6...To most ears, this would sound like gibberish. But listening to her little son mumble in his sleep, Aruna Ghosh could make out that he was planning chess moves in his dream.
Diptayan Ghosh, now 17, has fulfilled his dream of becoming a Grandmaster (GM) - India's 43rd and Bengal's seventh. He achieved this feat at the HD Bank Cup in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, earlier this month when he bagged his third GM norm. He had already fulfilled the other requirement of becoming a GM - touching 2500 Elo rating, which he did in October 2014.
The current defender of The Telegraph School's Chess Championship title who earned his first ratings years ago at this tournament, has sent an application to Fide, the world body, with his norm certificates. The ratification is expected in April on fide.com.
The Bengal chess fraternity is delighted. "We have been waiting for this to happen for two years now. He has been one of our best young talents for the past five-six years," Dibyendu Barua, Bengal's first GM, told Metro. Alekhine Chess Club, where Diptayan has been honing his skills since the age of five, felicitated him on Monday.
It was his 86-year-old grandmother Jharna who had baptised him on the checkerboard. "When he was three and half, I took him to YMCA to play table tennis. But the boards were beyond his reach," she recalls. So it was chess at home with grandma.
Admission to South Point School in Class I made the family shift south from Lake Town and hence Alekhine became the learning pad of choice. Within a year, the tot was moved to the club's advanced training programme. "I took the game seriously after I became the under-9 national champion in 2007," says the soft-spoken lad, who prefers to let others speak while fiddling with mobile games himself.
In the next two years, he followed it up with back-to-back Asian Championships - the under-10 crown in Iran and the under-12 in Delhi. "I was the third seed in 2008. I did not expect to beat the strong competition from China and Vietnam on my first trip abroad."
The 10-year-old had a crazy schedule. He attended morning school till 11.40am, followed by lunch and studies at his Haltu home. Then his mother would rush him to hour-long swimming sessions at Anderson Club from 4.20pm while his chess class would start at 6pm at Gorky Sadan. "It would get 9.30-10pm for us to return. He would eat on the way in public buses. Then there were tournaments to play in in the districts in the weekends," his mother recalls.
No wonder their relatives were critical about the boy "wasting time" on chess. But his father Sandip, a former swimmer, wanted to see him shine in sports. "When he became Asian champion by Class V, I had to egg him on. Once the GM title came within touching distance, the same relatives urged him to drop a year from school," he laughs.
But the South Pointer, who has consistently done well in studies too, would not hear of it. "The school has been very supportive. They waived his tuition fees from Class V. Even if he missed a paper in his annual exam, they let him take it at a later date. The principal Rupa Sanyal Bhattacharjee also got teachers to help him out with extra classes as he had to miss school from time to time to play in tournaments abroad," his mother says.
Though by virtue of being in the top three of national championships he earned government sponsorship to travel to the next Asian and World Youth Championships as part of the Indian team, participation in the open meets is a costly proposition. "We have to spend over Rs 2 lakh a year for these trips. Right now, he does not have a sponsor. That is why we can't afford coaching by foreign grandmasters. Good coaches cost about $100 an hour," his father says.
Diptayan's next target is achieving the 2600 Elo rating. Currently he is at 2552. "My idol Magnus Carlsen (the Norwegian GM) achieved the all-time high of 2872 last year," he says.
Even in this hour of celebration as he awaits his Higher Secondary results, the one regret that eats up the boy is the absence of his "sir" Shankar Roy. The Alekhine coach, who would stay up all night to study his opponent's game before every match and pass on vital tips, died in 2012 just after Diptayan got his first IM (International Master) norm. "He shaped our son," his parents say.
The new GM has no time to rest on his laurels. He's off to Dubai next, on April 9.
