NEW DELHI: In Tamil, the word “Anna” means elder brother, someone who watches your back, even if there is no blood relation. Bollywood gave its own version in “Shaadi Se Pehle”, with Sunil Shetty, playing a gangster, coming up with a one-liner: “Apun Anna 24 ghante chaukanna.” (I’m Anna, always alert).For Vaishali Rameshbabu, one of India’s only four female Grandmasters, that kind of loud alertness wouldn’t have helped; what she needed was someone to pull her up when she had already written herself out of the game a couple of months back.After a rough Chennai Grand Masters, where she scored just one point and lost seven games in a row, the 24-year-old had made up her mind – she wouldn’t play the Women’s Grand Swiss, the very tournament she had won in its previous edition.“It might sound funny, but after Chennai, I decided not to play Grand Swiss,” she told ChessBase in what was her first interview after her final-round match in Samarkand last month. “I felt so bad. Losing seven games in a row was hard to recover from.”It was then that Karthikeyan Murali, or “Karthi Anna” to Vaishali, quietly entered the story.
India’s GM Vaishali Rameshbabu with her mother and brother R Praggnanandhaa, also a grandmaster, poses for pictures after winning the FIDE Women’s Grand Swiss 2025. (FIDE/PTI)
However, it wasn’t Vaishali or Karthikeyan who initiated contact. RB Ramesh, their childhood coach and mentor, saw the chance for someone to remind her of what she was capable of.Long calls followed, in Tamil, filled with encouragement rather than analysis. Karthikeyan didn’t lecture but offered perspectives to somehow convince Vaishali to reconsider.“Thanks to Karthi Anna, we had a long call, and somehow he convinced me to play in the Grand Swiss. I am very grateful to him,” Vaishali said afterwards.
R Vaishali won the FIDE Grand Swiss for second edition running. (Image: FIDE)
She played and how! Vaishali defended her title, securing her place in the Women’s Candidates 2026.As his “intuition” that Vaishali would lift the trophy again had come true, Karthikeyan, competing under the same roof, could only smile gingerly while watching the impact of words.A Grandmaster himself, the 26-year-old has had a journey rooted in simplicity and patience.“When I was nine or ten, my dad had surgery and was on bed rest for about 15 days. During that time, we played checkers, carrom, and chess. I got more interested in chess than anything else, and that’s how it started,” he tells TimesofIndia.com during a free-wheeling chat.But talent alone wasn’t enough. The early years saw financial anxiety and limited opportunities.“The difficult part wasn’t chess itself,” he continues. “It was getting financial support and sponsors. My family and me, we had to pay for travel and tournaments ourselves. Things were really difficult until 2017, when I got a job. It went very smoothly from there.”
Karthikeyan Murali (Special Arrangement)
Even recently, Karthikeyan had this uncanny moment. At the Chennai Grand Masters, he was supposed to play in the Challenger section. Two days before the tournament, he got a call that he’d be playing in the Masters instead, owing to the withdrawal of Vladimir Fedoseev.In Chennai, he finished fourth, but that result now rarely matters as the 1999-born adds: “One thing I can say for sure is that whatever resources you get, no matter how small, you should make full use of them. Even little things can have a huge impact.“I remember when I was young, I got access to Karsten Müller’s endgame DVDs: five volumes, about ten lessons in total. Back then, getting something like that wasn’t easy. So whenever you get access to something like this, you have to make the most of it.”Today, it is the tale of a boy playing chess at home during his father’s recovery from surgery and a grandmaster supporting a potential Women’s World Champion.And that, in the world of chess and beyond, is “Karthi Anna”.
