A Genius, A Mastermind, A Maverick, A Psycho, An Eccentric, and arguably The Greatest Chess Player Ever – one epithet wouldn’t suffice to describe Bobby Fischer. A school dropout with an IQ of an astonishing 180, he became US Chess Champion at the age of 14!! This was the guy who ended the Soviet domination of Chess and perhaps may have been the harbinger for Chess to become popular world-wide (all while he kept becoming more and more notorious).

Every sport produces a rebel. A rebel whose mind is wired completely different compared to their peers and one who gives two hoots to what the world thinks of him. If Tennis has John McEnroe, Football has Zinadine Zidane. It used to be a Herculean task for the organizers to make Bobby participate in a tournament. He demanded humungous prize amounts and stipulated hundreds of conditions which often ran into paragraphs and pages. Conditions unheard of before like, children should not eat chocolate while watching the tournament (because the wrappers produce rustle), the size and color of the squares on the chess board, that he should be allowed to wear dark glasses (so that the opponent can’t see his eye movements), to the extent that even the lavatory seats must be at a height that he wanted them to be!! – things if implemented would truly create the ‘Perfect Conditions for Playing Chess’.
He had a lot of objections with the format of Chess itself – the player playing with White pieces always begins the game giving that player a very slight positional advantage. To eliminate this advantage, Bobby proposed randomizing the positions of all the pieces behind the pawns. Then there would be 960 different starting positions for the chess pieces forcing the player playing White come out of his pre-prepared opening variations. Also, it’s very common that a better player may sometimes lose to a weaker player because of Time Pressure (while playing with a Chess Clock with each player given say 2 hours of play time). He patented an electronic Chess Clock which adds a few seconds to ones kitty after a player makes his move – a gem of an idea. This has now become an accepted international standard and is called the ‘Fischer Clock’.

He did crazy things like ‘bunking’ the inaugural ceremonies before tournaments, turning up late for the rounds and running away god-knows-where in between the tournament. He once called Garry Kasparov a ‘Dog’ ! He was also chased by the FBI for he was to be captured for some petty offences like tax evasion, and violating US sanctions (he played a tournament in Yugoslavia, which was under US sanctions) etc. The world didn’t knew where he used to live, whether he was alive or not, for more than 20 years since he won the World Championship after crushing the then soviet Champion Boris Spassky! The day he won the world championship title he even went to the extent of joining the Doomsday Cult – the Church of Worldwide God. There is a rumor that he once came online anonymously on the Internet and defeated Nigel Short, another chess prodigy, badly in a series of online chess games! He even appeared on radio sometimes in praise for 9/11 and addressing United States and Jews in all the possible abusive words including the f-ones!! He was once arrested for a short time in Pasedena, California and was made to face extremely uncouth police officers and underwent third degree of physical torture. He could never go back to US because he had a death penalty in his name.

I am quite poignant to write the article in the past tense as this ‘King of Chess’ got check-mated in life on January 17, 2007 due to a kidney failure. It’s quite saddening to the Chess World that we can no longer hear any more of his fascinating idiosyncrasies.

We spend most of our time in mundane things like eating, sleeping, gossiping, watching movies and may be hanging out with friends. Some of us indulge ourselves in the comforts of this world. Yet some others cherish fighting under misguided principles and blind faith. We see news of cities getting destroyed with strife and terror. Others lead a much simpler life of waking up everyday, going to work, coming back, spend time with family and going to sleep. It feels so strange even to imagine that we are but a puny figment in the vast unimaginable universe? Lucky ones amongst us may live up to a hundred years. Our planet itself has been around for a 4.5 billion years and our life-time can be approximated to a zero when compared to it. The age of universe is 13.7 billion years !!

Recently I read the book "The Theory of Everything - by Stephen Hawking" and it took me into a world of stars, galaxies and black holes. There are a lot of things in the book which make you wonder who created this marvellous universe? The whole of the universe grew by a factor of 100 billion trillion trillion in 10 to the power of -32 seconds !! A gargantuan rate which we never can contemplate. A lot has happened in those nano nano nano seconds (dont know how to phrase such a miniscule number !). Within the first 100 seconds, the temperature of the universe cooled down to about a Billion Kelvin !! Aint kiddin :)

There are so many unanswered questions. What was the cause of the big bang? What used to exist before the big bang? Even if the velocity with which the particles flew away from each other was a billionth of a fraction lower than what it was, the whole of matter would have collapsed due to gravity. Who ensured that the velocity was just sufficient for the universe to continually expand and not contract? Why should gravity make things get attracted to each other rather then repel them from one another? The second law of Thermodynamics seems to run the whole universe. This law states that the Entropy (or disorder) of a system always tends to increase. That is why a tea cup gets shattered into a thousand shards rather than the thousand shards getting united to a single cup. The direction of Time was set to the direction of Entropy ensuring that we never see things like shards joing to a form a cup. Who set these directions? Since time moves forward, we see our past clearly. If only it was the otherway round, we would have taken birth (or got undeathed?!) from the graves and got younger everyday and go back finally in to the wombs of our mothers. Chandrashekar Limit decides the amount of mass a dying Star should shed so that it doesnt collapse into itself. And stars do exactly this, shed the right amount of mass in order to survive longer. Blackholes...now this is another big fascinating area where even time slows down. Are all these the works of GOD, even so, who created GOD in the first place?

Sometimes, when I think about these questions, it makes me feel that the whole world might be conspiring against me by hiding the answers to the questions. Am I a part of one big experiment that God is conducting? It gets very creepy to even think about it. 'Experiment' reminds of the HGTHG, in which in earth, the second most intelligent beings are actually humans, the first being 'rats' which are actually using humans as experiment objects which we never realise !!!

Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy has humorous answers to each of the intriguing questions. The creatures (not people!) in that book create a super duper computer ("Deep Thought") which is feeded the Ultimate Question. After about 4 million years to compute the answer and another 3 million years to check the answer, the comuter finally comes up with a numerical answer of "42" !!!!! When the creatures, who got flabberghasted, ask Deep Thought what the Ultimate Question was in the first place, it says it has no capacity to provide the question but that it will design a yet powerful computer to find the "Ultimate Question". This supercomputer turns out to be our dear planet Earth. And after 10 million years of waiting just before the Ultimate Question was getting unveiled, one fine day, earth just gets bulldozed by some species called "Vogons" because earth was a hindrance to their plans of an inter-galactical expressway !!

For now, I dont know the ultimate question but will suffice myself with the answer "42" !

Your friends wont lend you their bike for learning if you dont know bike-riding and You are not allowed to buy one until you learn bike-riding...! This has been an eternal deadlock I been facing all my life...and one needs to break the chain boldly if at all one wants to really own a bike eventually...

So there I was one fine day, boldly asking one of my friends to lend me the bike as I had to go out ...I went to the bike but was unable even to start it ! I realized I needed an unselfish guru who can teach you not minding the prospective damages to his own bike. Thus came along my Guru - Mr. Anil Babu who took the biggest risk of teaching me the Fundamentals of Bike-Riding. It did not take many days for me to learn as I was very comfortable with gearless bikes already... 5 days passed and my guru was relieved to find that his bike was safe and sound with no depreciation in the capital asset.

Then I started venturing out on my own... !


Bike Ride 1: It was a solo act just to test out my prowess in handling the machine without instructions pouring into my ears from behind...I had no destination in mind...All I wanted was to survive the next 20 minutes. I started the bike with some effort (the bike was totally reluctant to move a bit u see... it was more afraid than I) and lo! I was on the road all by myself...The bike stopped exactly after 1 minute of the ride. It said 'Dude,this is too funny! We both gonna die if you drive this sane'. Cant give up on the first ride! I persisted till I eventually managed to reach a petrol station to fuel it up. When I came back to the hostel, I had to count my limbs and fingers and Thank God! they totaled up fine.

Bike Ride 2: I became more adventurous.. This time I claimed to my friend that I am an expert rider. So he allowed me to do the honors and he sat on the pillion seat. It was 12:00 in the midnight. The destination was India Gate - A place where you can reach at 1:00am and still have some good time pass(oh.. that kaala-khatta there !!). The bike stopped once or twice in the middle but we reached the spot :) I did it again. My first successful night travel.

Bike Ride 3: I now thought I am really an expert, so this time I ventured much further and proposed to a dear friend who was another bike-novice that I will take him till Sangam Theatre to buy the first day-midnight show tickets for Jodha Akbar. This I got to admit must be the worst bike-ride ever for anyone !! The bike stopped atleast 20 times at various crucial junctures (surely understating)...A Prado was right at our rear, and the driver started honking as if it was some kind of a honking contest..I felt as if an elephant is just gonna trample upon me. Then again it stopped at every single traffic signal! You stop at a traffic signal and you would get to hear so many beautiful gaalis in so many different native tongues. If one has to see the true diversity of India, it is at the traffic signals. Man! No orchestra can beat the kind of honks and gaalis you get to hear. My confidence got blown into smithereens this time. But mind you, Manugarras of the world are not among those who give up so easily.


Bike Ride 4: This was the first time I took courage to actually offer a girl a ride till Priyas. I knew that if anything like the ride before happened again, my morale as well my reputation as a reliable bike-rider would be put to rest and sent off to the nearest mortuary. I was too cautious not to let the clutch slip off from my hands and surprisingly managed a very safe and successful ride!! She was impressed. May be it was my guardian angel who actually rode the bike this time.

Bike Ride 5: Confidence restored, this time I offered my another friend, a ride till the nearest market. He got flabbergasted when I told him this was my Ride No-5. He seriously suspected something funny would happen and that he would find himself falling off the bike with my stunts. Nothing funny of that sort happened, but this time the bike stopped right in the middle of the road when I was taking a U-turn and an auto-rickshaw had to apply sudden brakes to stop just inches away from me. My heart took a small leap out of its bearings. He started swearing in the names of all the Gods he knew. I just smiled at him.

Its amazing how this world is still such a safe place with expert bike-riders like me loose on the roads.


PS: Commuters Beware! The next time you see a bike approaching wildly at you, do your prayers, it could very well be me ;)