A beautiful painting: How the chess saved an Indian village of alcohol, gambling health

Marouchal, India -Phones, wallets, and tea dishes semi-falling the chaos of empty tables-with one-in one of the cafes in southern India, where a crowd was formed around the chess panel and two competitors.

One of them is Gowrishankar Jayaraaj, 15 years old. Surrounded by spectators competing for a view to the chess panel, Jayraj blindfolded.

The blind playing of the opening of the game means that the teenager must depict, preserve and update the mental model of the council, as the moves are connected from both players loudly by the appointed referee.

Jayaraaj plays an older child John John, whose expression is not comfortable. Its shoulders and the follow -up of the mouth that it is a handful of moves away from losing its fourth match in approximately 40 minutes.

“Gowrishankar is only 15 years old and he is already something from the chess Virgin. John says:” He hit me even when he is blind. “

“Chess Village in India”

Jayraj and John is a resident of Marouchal, a sleeping village that includes approximately 6000 people located at the West Ghats foot in the Kerala state in the picturesque India.

In the early first decade of the twentieth century, Marotichal became known by the Chess community in Kerala as “the village of India in India” because it is believed that at least one person in every family here is sufficient. Through the village, people sit regularly through chess panels, compete under bus stations, outside grocery stores and on the field.

“More than 4,500 people here – or 75 percent – said of the 6000 -players who are advancing,” says John, who is also the head of the Chess Association in Marouchall.

Jayaraaj is currently ranked first in the best 600 active players in India, according to the World Chess Federation (FIDE), and hopes to add an increasing place in India as a global pioneer in this sport.

In September, India invaded open gold medals and women in the 2024 chess Olympics. Then, Guick Dommaraju, 18 -year -old, won the country with the country’s chess championship in December. Grandmaster Koneru Humping stopped a year laden for India after winning the Fide World Rapid Cys championship in the same month.

Jayaraaj, who currently bears the classification of 2012 by FIDE, is in the footsteps of Indian heroes such as Viswanathan Anand and Dommaraju, and become GrandMaster.

His dream reflects the long journey that Marotichal has taken to break a completely different reputation than that you are currently enjoying.

“King and Savior”

Four decades ago, the village was in the grip of alcohol addiction and the gambling crisis that was pushing many families to the edge of ruin.

In the seventies of the twentieth century, three Marouchal families were brewing alcohol -based alcohol for personal consumption. But by the early eighties, the village became a regional center for illegal alcohol production.

“People were not just drinking, they were brewing and selling alcohol in their homes every night,” said Jayraj Manzahi, a village resident – had nothing to do with Joachnikar Jayraj – he told the island.

Trade between villages flowed with Marottinghal as a source of alcohol.

But agricultural families have begun to neglect their livestock and crops. With the revenue from the ground, the villagers quickly turned into gambling through paper games in alcohol production houses, in terms of betting also.

The lack of regular income and dependence on alcohol witnessed that many families fall into poverty.

“Young children have left without clothes to wear. Others say,” Others were starving. “It seems that there is no hope to end the epidemic.

Until Charliyil Unnikrishnan, one of the local residents turned to Marotichal in the late 1980s.

Onnisrichan was recruited by his family for joining the Mawaen movement in his youth. He gave up the movement and returned in the early thirties to create Taihus in the heart of the village.

But the effect of alcohol held on his village disturbed the former rebels. “It was a dark time at that time for our society,” he remembers the island.

Unnikrishnan decided to act.

He assembled a small group of friends who knew from the teenage years in the village and began to communicate with the wives and mothers of alcohol producers whose husbands and children angered them to lead production.

For months, UNNIKRISHNAN receives isolated parties around fermentation times, which usually occur for a long time at night. UNNIKRISHNAN and his friends were dismissing homes where alcohol was produced and stored, destroyed the hidden supplies and equipment used to produce them.

Sometimes, they met the resistance, but UNNIKRISHNAN had collected support from other villagers who were desperate for change. The number of producers, with a decrease in demand and a few means to restart their project, exceeds their number.

After the raids, Unnikishnan will invite members of society to play chess.

The game collected for us together. John, who won funding from other villages to create regional championships and meet for chess to become part of the curricula in each other villages to create regional championships, and meet to play chess. Drinking. Elementary schools in the village.

“We really started to collect our lives around this beautiful painting,” he says.

In his store, UNNIKRISHNAN served the villagers not only tea, but also seeing a future of alcohol addiction. He told them that it can be done through the chess game, an old strategic game believed to have originated in India.

Soon after, people were involved in the chess panel a common scene throughout the village.

Meanwhile, alcohol addiction and gambling began to decline in the village. Families, which were once destroyed by the bottle, gathered together around a chessboard, competing against their loved ones at the height of a companion.

“Before we knew chess, many (from us) was without a list,” says Francis Kasabelli, who is addicted to alcohol, and he stands alongside Onnisrichnan at The Teahouse Watch Jayaraaj and John Play.

“We did not focus. Chess gave us something new.”

UNNIKRISHNAN has taught chess to about 1,000 villagers and competed himself against Grandmasters at the international level. Many young players from Marotichal are competing at the international level and inside India regularly.

In 2016, Marotichal won a global Asian record by the Universal Records Forum for the largest number of amateur competitors (1,001) playing chess in Asia.

John says, Orencichnan, who is now 67 years old, “is known to people in Marouchal as a king and our Savior.”

“Chess brought me back to life”

Unlike gambling, there is almost no element of chance in the chess game.

The game is inevitable – the player who achieves the best set of moves wins; The rules and coordination remove the opportunity to cite negative circumstances as excuses or blame for bad luck for losses.

Unnikrishnan hesitates to say that the value of chess in making good decisions and avoiding bad pieces is the only one responsible for low alcoholism and gambling in Marotichal.

But he believes it has a “great influence.”

Throughout the world, chess was useful in treating addiction and psychological and cognitive issues. In Spain, sports were combined into rehabilitation programs to treat drug, alcohol and gambling addiction. Recently, in the UK, the psychologist Rosie Mix has argued that chess clubs in prison helped “reduce violence and conflict, develop communication and other skills, and enhance the positive use of entertainment time” among prisoners.

Few felt chess to benefit more than Jim Valor.

The 59 -year -old is the Vice President of the Chess Association in Marouchal and one of the most enthusiastic players.

Immediately before noon on a great day in January in Teahouse in Unnikrishnan, it opens his match with a cheerful smile, and by the middle match, he laughs agate with his opponent. The pieces are exchanged on exciting jokes on a black and white plate between them.

Twenty -five years ago, Fallor was fighting for his life after he had a high -speed accident while riding his motorbike. The first respondents exfoliated his mourning body from the road and rushed to the hospital, where he would have spent two months addicted to life support machines.

“Doctors told my family and friends that my mind had been severely affected by the accident,” Valor told Al -Jazeera.

He was completely paralyzed at first, but he slowly began to restore movement in his lower body. Unnikishnan and John were among his close friends and will spend hours next to his bed in the hospital.

After Vallur began to show signs of improvement in his speech, his friends will attend a chess board during their visits. Soon, his cognitive functions began to improve. Today, only his right arm paralyzed from the shoulder down.

Fallor believes that regular chess matches during his recovery helped. He says, “Chess brought me back to life.”

In 2023, Maroucha’s salvation attracted the attention of director and writer Kabir Khourana, who directed a 35 -minute movie, in the Pediche of Maroucha, drawing the village struggle with addiction to recovering.

“He felt enthusiastic, passionate and energy when he visited the village for the first time,” says Khourana, whose movie was appointed this year.

Again in Teahouse in Unnikrishnan, midday games began to finish. Fallor rises to the plate for the final match against Jayraj, the victor again.

“His mother taught how to play,” says Valor smiling. “It will make all of India proud.”