The origin of chess has a similar, albeit far more complex, overtone. We can observe and comprehend the delineations of combat from the feet and knees, toe-heel actions, and supple and aggressive hand gestures even if their movements do not indulge in using weapons as props. In folk dances, war movements have been depicted for aeons. Perchance this is the way the brain is optimised-arranging a point of conflux for the right side and the left side. Her days beat to the steady rhythm of nattuvangam (the rhythm of cymbals). I asked this empanelled artist of the ICCR, who is also an A-grade artist of Doordarshan about the conundrum of mastering time, and she chuckled and said that she leads a life of upright discipline and that of an early riser and a fitness enthusiast. She won, among other awards, the Yuva Kala Bharati and Nadanamamani. Her guruji Neela Krishnamurthy must have been proud. Kavitha Ramu set her steps right early, and by the age of eight, she performed at the Fifth World Tamil Conference held in Chidambaram.

The temple city of Madurai, her birthplace, chimes at her heart. Her father served as an IAS officer and her mother worked as a professor of economics. IAS and resplendence run through her veins. She also runs a dance school that architects hundreds of future artists. She holds the balance of mind and walks on the tightrope, taut between two poles of days and nights-being an efficient IAS officer, collector of Pudukkottai, and performing the classical dance, Bharatanatyam. Kavitha Ramu specialises in managing time in her real life.

The performance, titled Chaturangam - A Dance Depiction reminds me of the breathtaking single-cell thunderstorms that live briefly and leave an indelible weal in your memory. If you watch the video, apart from the dexterity, its storytelling will stun you mesmerised, you will follow the choreography conceptualised and galvanised by Kavitha Ramu and wonder how it might have perfected time management while chronicling the chess moves and a war story where a woman, the queen, is the almighty. The clip I talk about records a dance drama and celebrates the hallowed game of chess. While watching and returning to play one three minute and forty-seven second video, I thought that like war and chess, above all, the presence of the brain functions on a board, in a field, or on a stage. This is the year 2022, and the 44th FIDE Chess Olympiad is inaugurated in Chennai. The performers and the participants become the protagonists of a myth in the making, unperturbed by the audience or by posterity while very much aware of those numerous eyes from the present and the future following their grace and their pulsating blood within the pliant flesh. There are rules, precedents, and innovation bound together by those. This is the year 2022.Ī movement in dance or in chess has a thousand years of practice and patience, and generations of minor falls and major lifts. We came to know the way Sun Tzu can be availed in daily life, chess is not a mere game about fights between brains, and dance is not only a form of entertainment. The gamut of the first move was wide open, and as the game danced ahead we knew not always the pawns were the gambits. The music was that of sticks hitting the drums rapidly. It was of a dance composition, and in its beginning, our kings and queens locked their eyes in the harsh glow of anger. We hung on somewhere, observed, died, lived, and repeated the same with minor advancements, and a video went viral. They lived in this black and white checkerboard kingdom. Once upon a time-our time, yours too-there was the black queen and the white one, paired with their kings, knights, rooks, bishops, and pawns too.

Checkmate with two knights