Chennai :
Growing up in Delhi, Mohan Verghese Chunkath used to play ‘kitchen table scrabble’ with his siblings and parents. What started out as a pastime became a passion and today, despite a demanding career, the senior bureaucrat is a force to reckon with in the war of words. Chunkath recently won the Bayer National Scrabble Championship 2015 held in Mumbai from May 29 to 31.
“I have been playing scrabble since my childhood, but it was a family game and never played one on one, there were always three of four of us playing together,” says Chunkath, who began playing competitive scrabble in the 1990s.
“I had gone to the US on study leave, and began going to the local club to play. I got interested in competitive scrabble and went from rookie to expert level while I was there,” says Chunkath, director, Anna Institute of Management, and additional chief secretary and director general of training, Tamil Nadu.
He became the first person to represent India in the world scrabble championship held in Melbourne in 1999. “I also participated in the world championships in 2001 and 2007 but work pressure was building up,” says Chunkath. The demands of his growing career meant that he couldn’t devote as much time for competitive scrabble though he did play on the net or sometimes with friends. “I almost drifted out of competitive scrabble, but after my change of job in December 2014, I came back to the scrabble scene,” he says. In January 2015, he participated in iGate International Scrabble Tournament held in Bangalore.
For the voracious reader, scrabble is chess with words. “There is a lot of strategy involved, and a lot of nuances to the game — you track tiles that are played, work with probability, know what is in your bag, what your opponent is likely to have in his bag, how to maximize your offence and defence. It is an interesting hybrid between skill and luck,” says Chunkath.
The championship he recently won saw him pitted against the best. “Indian scrabble players have become very strong and the games were fought very keenly,” says Chunkath. “Younger players have an advantage as don’t get fatigued easily. We played a fairly gruelling number of games – on the first day we played eight games, nine on the second day and though I was supposed to play eight games on the third day, I was able to wrap up after playing just seven,” says the 59-year-old, who beat Sherwin Rodrigues, a player in his mid-20s.
According to him, the future of scrabble in India is very bright. “With the stellar spelling bee performances by Indians in the last decade, scrabble is just waiting to explode in India,” he says. “There is tremendous potential.”
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Chennai / by Priya M. Menon, TNN / June 04th, 2015