I have decided to start a chess club at the college, to add to its already impressive choice of extra-curricular activities (even though one range of clubs is labelled “academic”, which does not strike me as extra-curricular at all.)
The first stage has been to buy some chess sets, which is proving surprisingly challenging. I did try the large department store on the edge of town, but all they had to offer was a combined chess and ludo set, and this seemed slightly… I don’t know, undignified. (Even though I know that ludo is remarkable popular throughout the middle east and, it seems, here as well.)
And so, assisted by Chhatra, a member of the Sports Club committee, standing in for Aashish, who is away at present, we went on a hunt. The first shop we visited he described as the best bookshop in Dhangardhi. Rather like Blackwell’s in Oxford, an unprepossessing front opened Tardis-like, into a larger store stretching back… if Blackwell’s had been twenty times smaller, and had sold toys and craft materials as well as books, only not many books.
They did, though, have a chess set. Not a specially good one, but beggars can’t be choosers. Fine, I said, do you have any more? The girl looked at me blankly. Why would I want more than one. But she recovered herself. No, this was it. So I took it. It was beginning to look like chess club would have just this one set, and, if I dismantled the game I was playing with a friend back home, one other. Though that might be enough, of course. Or more than enough. It was anyone’s guess.
But we pressed on, taking another tuk tuk. Another, smaller, bookshop – nothing doing. And then we came upon a sports shop, and the girl led us to the back, where they had, sitting on a shelf, another set. Did they have any more? I wasn’t hopeful, but felt I had to ask. Yes, she nodded, and pointed upstairs. If stairs was the right word; not too much more than a ladder, but it did have a handrail, so we hauled ourselves upstairs, onto a sort of loft… Mezzanine was too fancy a word, for if downstairs had been a bit higgledy piggledy, this was a complete mess, We stepped over some random weights on the floor, past a bloke trying out a cricket bat, and there, on a rather dusty shelf, was a positive treasure trove, a pile of small boxes with a familiar design on the side – chess. There were seven in total, so we took six – I told the guy I was leaving the other one for the rest of Dhangardhi. Purchased some boards, one slightly smaller than the rest, and I grabbed a pair of table tennis balls from a jar; I had seen the guys using the school table struggling with a dented ball.
The guy wrote out an impressively detailed receipt, by hand. We said goodbye to them both, but then spotting some football shirts in a shop more or less next door, we scrambled in; there are extensive roadworks going on there, and it was actually like something out of the Somme trying to get into the place. Only to find no one in attendance. We called out – hello! And who should arrive but the guy and the girl from the shop next door!
I have been trying to find a football shirt in my size, XXL – modern football shirts are excellent in this heat, being very sweat-absorbent. And I didn’t care what team (except Manchester United – one has to draw the line somewhere. But no, nothing above XL. And I’ve tried those.
But the main aim was achieved: Chess Club was go! Whether it would attract any players – we were advertising the club for everyone from absolute beginners to grand masters – was another matter entirely.
