As the tense form of Vaishali sits on the board, blitzing out moves against elite opponents at the Norway Chess tournament, her mother Nagalakshmi makes herself comfortable on the last seat of the playing hall in a spot that’s out of Vaishali’s eyeline. Walk into the playing hall on any given day of the Norway Chess tournament, and Nagalakshmi will likely be there in that exact seat for an hour after 5 pm when the games start. Her face is usually impassive. Her eyes are trained on the facsimiles of the chessboards being projected up on the walls of the playing hall at the Finansparken Bjergsted for the audience to follow the action.
She admits she doesn’t understand the nuances of the sport — or even wants to understand them — but as Praggnanandhaa had said during the Tata Steel Kolkata Chess tournament in 2023, she can gauge what’s going on on the board simply by the expressions on her kids’ faces.
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“But these days it’s getting harder to do that,” she had told The Indian Express with a chuckle last year during the Norway Chess tournament, when again, you could find her on the same seat in the playing hall during each game of Norway Chess when both of her kids, Praggnanandhaa and Vaishali, were playing. “Both my kids usually have the same expression during games these days. It’s hard for me to read it now. I don’t know the game. And I don’t ever want to learn the game. It’s a conscious decision. If I learn the sport, then every move will be a source of tension. Because I don’t know the sport well, I’m okay.”
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Thanks to her two children, Nagalakshmi has lived some of the dreams she had when she was younger.
“I’m on my sixth passport now. Four of them are completely stamped out,” Nagalakshmi beamed. She wasn’t boasting, but you could sense the pride in her voice at what the passports had come to represent. When she was young, she had dreamt of a life abroad.
“I got my first passport when I was young and studying. I had a BSc degree in mathematics. Before I got married, I wanted to go abroad and work at a hospital in whichever country I could. But that passport expired without it getting any use. I wanted to pursue this further abroad. I also worked as a lab technician in Chennai. Twice in my younger days, I had a government job. But on one of those occasions, I was pregnant (with Vaishali), so I had to forgo the opportunity,” Nagalakshmi had told The Indian Express.
If chess players are bound by game-time routines, players’ parents such as Nagalakshmi find their own rhythms too for the five-hour-plus windows when they’re just hanging about at the arena while their kids play. For the second straight year, Nagalakshmi tiptoes out of the playing hall as soon as the clash meanders into the middle game. She will be back during the endgame, usually carrying a fruit or a bar of chocolate in her handbag for Vaishali. This has been one of the routines that she follows at tournaments where she accompanies her kids around the world. She is also present within listening distance every time Vaishali does a media interview.
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Nagalakshmi is not the only family member of a player in the playing hall at Norway Chess. This year, Magnus Carlsen’s father, Henrik, and his wife, Ella, besides Gukesh’s father, Rajini Kanth, have been constants in the playing arena during every game. While Gukesh’s father sits in the playing hall itself with barely any movement from the start to the end of a game, Carlsen’s dad has a self-imposed prohibition about entering playing halls. So he withdraws to a backroom, out of sight from the rest of the world. Last year, the then world champion Ding Liren’s mother would also make it a point to be in the playing hall for games, ensuring she sat at a spot where her son was in her eye line.
Last year, at the official players’ hotel, since the breakfast would end early, it was not unusual to see Nagalakshmi carrying plates of food for both Pragg and Vaishali back to their rooms. She would then get busy cooking lunch for both kids in their room, with the utensils she had brought along with her. Though the kids eat non-vegetarian fare, and there are a few Indian restaurants in Stavanger, they’re always wary of what they might accidentally eat, so Nagalakshmi ensured they have a warm home-cooked meal for lunch before games.
“For breakfast, Pragg and I don’t leave the room because we’re usually sleeping. So our mother gets us plates of food with fruits and croissants in the morning. For lunch, she makes it all by herself. We don’t contribute anything or help her prepare in any way. She makes sure that other things are set for us during tournaments, and we can fully focus on chess. She has done the same for us for about 15 years now,” Vaishali had told The Indian Express during Norway Chess 2024.
The grandmaster sibling duo is so used to having Nagalakshmi in their corner at events that when they’re both playing in different countries, things get tricky for whoever has to travel alone.
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“I’m so used to travelling to tournaments with her that I feel the absence when she has to travel with Pragg. Last year, I went to Turkey to play in the Turkish league, when I was staying alone. My mother had travelled with Pragg because he had a more important tournament at the time. I had to cook for myself because I didn’t like the food. I had to make my own lunch, so I had to prepare before games and then I had to wash the dishes myself. I really felt every day at that time that I wish my mother was here,” Vaishali had said.
Ask her if she has any advice for parents of youngsters who dream of their kids becoming the next grandmasters, and Nagalakshmi said: “Don’t put pressure on kids. It’s the kids who have to want to work hard (to be good chess players). The motivation has to come from within, not from you.”
The writer is in Stavanger at the invitation of Norway Chess
