The New Indian Express ·
I don't spend time thinking about legacies or how people will remember me: Anand
BENGALURU: A few days ago, Viswanathan Anand and D Gukesh had caught up for dinner. During the dinner, cooked by chef Suresh Pillai, the pair, India's only two world champions in Classical chess, had almost zero chess talk. "There was a lot of food talk," Anand told a select gathering of journalists on Friday, a day ahead of the fourth edition of the Global Chess League (GCL), which began in Bengaluru on Saturday.
"We were both very happy to just crack jokes," he said. "A couple of years ago, I had suggested to him that he could try different cuisines. He likes Japanese and Thai now and he has been experimenting a lot."
The 56-year-old, during the course of the conversation, also spoke about R Praggnanandhaa's recent purple patch. "He himself mentioned that he's fighting much harder and it's a conscious effort," the 56-year-old said. "I saw that when he takes the lead, he's very convincing. When he falls behind, he fights back. (It) happened in Norway (Chess), it happened in the absolute final and in the GCT. I can't pinpoint any one thing. He seems to have gone up a level. His strength was sort of there, ingredients were there and they tended to come together. It's good. Very fluid. Best player of the month or best player of the quarter, but worth pointing out that four rounds before the end of Norway Chess, we weren't going to call him the best player of the quarter."
