Culture shock in Delhi

By Sabrina Chevannes

When I heard that the Commonwealth 2015 was going to be held in Delhi, India, I was very excited to make plans to go. I had never been to India and it was definitely one of those places I wanted to cross off my list. In fact, I was visiting the Reykjavik Open in March this year when I was hanging out with IM Tania Sachdev who insisted I came to visit and combined it with the tournament. This sounded like the perfect plan and I made arrangements to make this happen!

On arriving at Delhi Airport, I was hit with 40 degrees of heat – somewhat contrasting weather to London! However, I was certainly not complaining. I proceeded to Costa Coffee to purchase a refreshing beverage to be pleasantly surprised that it cost about 25% of the price it would have in England! Definitely a good start! The car journey was an interesting one; I learnt how to drive in South London, where most people describe it as “like driving in India”, so I was expecting the usual. Boy was I in for a shock; I will be forever thankful for London’s “awful driving” after getting on the road in India! There are just no such things as lanes and all the cars are tooting their horn and getting in each other’s way.

Plus, there were hundreds of these guys, "auto-rickshaws", zipping in and out of the place!

Well, I made it to Tania’s place safely where I immediately went for a nap! Upon waking, I was presented with some amazing Indian food. We generally have great Indian food in London, but nothing could beat the authentic stuff! That night, I got to hit my first Delhi nightclub! I wasn’t sure what to expect to be honest, but it wasn’t too different from London – just a lot hotter! The club had a kind of tropical feel to it, though they were serving Sheesha (or shisha, a flavored molasses tobacco smoked in a hookah) in the outside part of the club – differences that I wasn’t going to complain about!

Enjoying the Delhi heat outside a nightclub with IM Tania Sachdev and her childhood friend

There wasn’t too much time for me to explore Delhi before the tournament and the weather made it simply unbearable to go out properly in the daytime. So, we headed to the official hotel ready for the tournament, but not before we had the chance to check out some live music at a local venue! I didn’t exactly understand the lyrics, but the music was great and the crowd loved them!

One of the other reasons that I was enticed into playing the Commonwealth Chess Championships, was the fact that each country gets to nominate players who get full board in a five star hotel. I was the nominated female from England and so was definitely looking forward to the luxury accommodation provided free of charge at the tournament. So, upon checking into the hotel, imagine my surprise when I am being told that I am actually sharing my room with two other women! There was some miscommunication because my federation was led to believe I was getting a single room. I was somewhat troubled by this, but headed up to my room to check out what I was expecting to be a suite, so could host three people. However, there was just one bed in the room! One of my roommates stayed the night before, so she had an extra foldup bed be put in the corner, but this still meant sharing a bed with a stranger for the duration of the tournament! The final disturbing straw was that my bed partner was just a young teenage girl, who looked pretty scared by the whole situation. Dealing with this issue at ten p.m. at night when you start a double round day at nine a.m. the next morning was not the greatest start to a tournament.

Apparently this was normal in India and was to be expected. It certainly wasn’t normal in England and I was definitely in shock and not impressed! After much complaining, the organisers managed to rectify the situation and the Maldivan teenage girl joined her teammates in another hotel nearby, leaving a sensible number in the room. It was not a single room as expected, but my roommate was nice and there was just enough space for the two of us to survive for the tournament.

So, the first round started at nine a.m., which was different from what was advertised, but we got to grips with the new schedule, which was actually an improvement. The drama of the tournament already started from round one, when the arbiter made an announcement of the rules and regulations of the event, which confused a fair few competitors. Such an announcement which led to Tania’s shock loss in the first round and Humpy Koneru’s early departure after round four (see this report).

However, a new experience did occur for me; as we all start to near time trouble (since we have no additional time!), the lights kept on going out. The arbiter would call us to stop the clocks. Then, some UV lights would come on and then the power would switch back on again. So, the clocks would start again. A minute later, the same thing would happen. Not only was this confusing, but it was so off-putting! The lights constantly going on and off would also give me headaches. But apparently – this was still all normal!! Most participants continued unfazed by the whole thing; it was only the foreign players who looked somewhat perturbed by the continuous power cuts.

After what was clearly a great start to the tournament (!), I then started to feel sick that night. I thought “Oh great, the usual Delhi belly that everyone has warned me about!” How wrong I was! I was up all night being sick and with fevers and generally feeling awful. I couldn’t believe it – day one and already I was suffering!

By the next morning, I felt like I was going to die! Luckily I had some great friends at the tournament who were looking after me. I even had medicine brought to my board the next day! God knows why I continued to play chess in that state, but I was determined to plough on. However, the usual state of affairs saw more power cuts and flashing lights the next day too – not exactly doing wonders for my state!

Sadly the medicine didn’t help too much and I continued to suffer. Thankfully, the organisers and the hotel were extremely helpful in this situation and I managed to get a doctor called out to the hotel to check up on me and give me more suitable medication. However, he took a blood sample to run it through some tests and the results came back a couple of days later… Typhoid Fever! Yep!! What a nightmare! Incredible really considering the hotel provided bottle water each day and there was a water fountain right outside the tournament hall. However, I forgot about using tap water when brushing my teeth and drinking drinks with ice in it. So, I was going to be suffering for the duration of my trip.

So there was not much adventure for me, and I decided to soak up the immediate environment as the contrast between being in a five star hotel and going outside was quite vast!

Hotel Park Plaza in New Delhi

The area surrounding the hotel

It might have been sweltering hot, but there were still areas which were flooded!

Contrasting areas adjacent to the above

The streets always seemed to be lined with parked vehicles

Inside the local shopping mall

I spent most of the tournament suffering indoors though, whilst trying to recover. At least there was still some exciting chess being played at the top.

I caught up with Abhijeet Gupta at the end of round six, when he was on a perfect score and most people were saying that he clearly had the tournament in the bag. However, we reminisced (somewhat painfully for Abhijeet) about last year’s tournament in Glasgow when he started off in the same way, but suddenly it went quite sour. So, in round seven, he was pretty focused against last year’s winner Deep Sengupta and found himself winning remarkably easily, taking him to a perfect 7/7! Now it was Deep who had to watch Abhijeet take home his trophy, as he drew his last games rather easily, bringing him to an amazing 8.0/9 and taking home the Commonwealth title.

Top final rankings (after nine rounds)

• Full results and rankings of all 150 players

GM Abhijeet Gupta takes gold, GM Arghyadip Das takes silver and GM Babu Lalith takes bronze.
However, Abhijeet didn’t get to keep his medal for long …

... he lent it to me to celebrate my fake Commonwealth victory!

IM Padmini Rout in action in round seven

Meanwhile, in the women’s championships, with Humpy out of the competition, it made things a rather interesting event. Rout Padmini was always favourite as top seed and with Tania’s upset in round one. However, IM Padmini, IM Subbaraman and WGM Meenakshi all found themselves on an amazing 7.0/9. By tie-break, Rout took the gold medal, being unbeaten in the whole tournament. However, both Meedakshi and Subbaraman had the most incredible finishes, both winning all six of their last six games!

After resting for a few days in bed and not playing chess at all, I decided to try and join my friends to celebrate their victories and enjoy my last night in India. Whilst the event was quite a culture shock for me and various incidents were rather alarming, all in all it was an interesting experience and I wouldn’t have been able to survive without the kindness of many. Would I go back? Well, perhaps try asking me again once I’m fully over this fever!

Pictures by Sabrina Chevannes and Helen Milligan

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