Remembering the Indian Morphy: Neelakantan Narayanan

On 23rd of July 2016, Neelakantan Narayanan passed away peacefully in his sleep at the age of 62 years. There are some players who play chess to earn a livelihood out of the game but Neelakantan was amongst the group of few players who played chess for the love of the game. A thoroughly fearless and creative player, Neelakantan was famed for his attacking play in his heydey.

Neelakantan as a personality

Neelakantan was a fierce attacker. Although he was a very strong player, one cannot really say that he was very successful. This is because his potential as a chess player was very high. The reason why he couldn't become a GM or an IM was because he wanted to play only for checkmate. He could not learn the modern techniques of defence because he did not find them interesting. He wanted to live in Paul Morphy's golden era.

Contribution towards the development of chess in Mumbai

Perhaps no Mumbai player would understand the significance of his great contribution to the growth of Mumbai chess.  Neelakantan joined the bank at an early age, but every day after his office job, he used to visit House of Soviet (Now Russian) Culture on Pedder road, bring the latest games messages received there through Telex. He would then bring them to the Zandu Pharmaceutical's Canteen, where we all spent most of our evenings analysing & playing chess for years. There used to be annotated material very often, which he translated for us during such 'self-training' sessions by us, a group of over 15 players! This initiative really gave good results, many Mumbai players went on to qualify to Indian teams on a regular basis. I believe that this type of leap would not have been possible without the material Neelakantan shared with us."

 

After Neelakantan's untimely demise we contacted Daniel King to tell us something more about that game.

"I was sorry to learn of his passing. My performance against him in the first round of the Goodricke tournament was absolutely miserable! But he took advantage of my mistakes very well. At least I have the satisfaction of knowing that the win gave him great pleasure.

He might have been even prouder had he known that later in the year, when I was working on TV covering the Short-Kasparov match in London, Garry mentioned to me (with a crocodile smile) that he had seen the game. If you recall, the 6. Bc4 variation was thoroughly examined during this match..."

Neelakantan is no more but his beautiful attacks and finales will live on! All these scalps were achieved by just playing in the Goodricke Open in Kolkata. One can only imagine what he would have achieved had he got more opportunities.

On a personal note - by Sagar Shah

On 29th of December 2011, I was playing the sixth round of the Don Bosco rating tournament in Matunga. My opponent was Amardeep Bartakke. I was black and thanks to my opponent's inaccuracy I got excellent attacking chances. The moment I started my attack, Neelakantan was there standing right next to me. He stood right until the very end, analysing all the possibilities and checking the moves that I was playing. After the game, he told me: "That was an excellent attack!" To be praised for your attacking chess is maybe one of the best compliments I have received in my chess career.

In January 2016 when I set up the first ChessBase India shop in the IIFL tournament he came to me and bought my Learn from the Classics DVD. We discussed the contents of the DVD and he told me that he would give me his opinion about my work. I never got the chance to ask him whether he liked the DVD or not. I can only hope that he did.