But before I get to that, a word about the Spoken English class, which continues to be a delight, spending time with lovely, intelligent young people. Kicked out of the Seminar Room again today – some huge marketing event or other – but scarcely a problem, as there are only four of them. It does take a while for them all to assemble, as two come from other classes ahead of mine, but by then the discussion had begun; today we discussed feminism, as I was interested to learn their take on this, all the more so since, eventually, they were two of each sex. But actually, all of them turned out to be liberal in their own viewpoint, and coming from apparently liberal families. In fact, it was Anu, who came upon us and joined in for a while, who struck the contrary note, particularly in relation to the traditional Nepalese view on menstruation. They are remarkably open here about talking about the subject, which came as something of a shock to me, since in England (and Western societies in general) such matters are kept entirely out of conversation. But Anu made the point that menstruating women here are not allowed to touch men (or, for that matter, plants) since apparently their touch will be deadly.
It did lead us off on a different path for a time, but otherwise the talk was interesting; I did have to make the point that actually this was an English class, not an ethics one. But that does not mean that our conversation has to be always trivial, on the level of how to ask for things in a restaurant.
But the afternoon provided me with a break (so far as I can see, the final day off from Romeo 4 Juliet until it is done) from rehearsals, in order to conduct the finale to my all too brief stint as master in charge of chess: the tournament to determine the SPA champion. Val had brought six chess clocks over from the UK with her, and today they were put into action. Eleven people… let’s be open about this, eleven boys… turned up, which meant three preliminary matches, to reduce the number to eight, and a straight knockout tournament, ten minutes per player.
It was a little haphazard, with chairs being used as tables, and I was too busy making sure all was running smoothly to pay too much attention to the actual play. But it did seem, as I remember was often the case in my youthful games, the players were too focused on winning pieces, and not enough on strategy. They also played lightning fast, which of course was encouraged by the clocks, but is also the way they play. It made for lots of mistakes, and not sufficient focus on checkmate – I did see one game in which one boy was quite obviously two moves from making certain mate, and still contrived to lose.
One boy, unused to clocks, was mildly annoyed to lose on time, but that was the game we were playing. And in the end, I think it did come down to a match between the two best players. And was won fair and square by good strategy, when Rahul trapped Amar’s queen cleverly, and then moved smoothly to inevitable checkmate. I had an extra set, a very cheap one bought before I discovered the ones I bought for the club, and this was the prize.
