Veteran international chess arbiter V. Kameswaran was on Thursday a man with mixed emotions — both happy and sad.
Kameswaran, 72, is happy for he is the first Indian to be named for the FIDE Arbiters Award 2016. He is one of the nine awardees globally.
But India’s first international chess arbiter is also a sad man as he cannot afford the expenses — travel, boarding and lodging — to accept the award at Baku, in Azerbaijan, where the 2016 Baku FIDE Congress general assembly is being held.
Ironically, on Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, the Indian teams — both men and women — flew to Baku to participate in the World Chess Olympiad, leaving behind the man who had slogged it out with a handful of other chess lovers to develop the game in Chennai, the cradle of Indian chess.
According to Kameswaran, the world chess body FIDE had told him that they do not have the budget for flying in and out the arbiter awardees.
“The All India Chess Federation (AICF) and the Tamil Nadu Chess Association too declined to take care of the travel expenses. What really saddens me is that there is not even a congratulatory message from the Indian chess body,” Kameswaran said.
“Kameswaran is one of the few chess players who worked hard to popularise chess in Chennai. He did that way back in the 1960s. He was instrumental in organising several tournaments in Chennai and in Tamil Nadu,” R. Raghunathan, a former National B player, told IANS.