2023 was a truly memorable year for Indian sport. With so much having happened, ESPN India picks ten images that tell the story of the most stunning moments we witnessed over the year. Our eighth pick is a moment where a mother’s smile told the story of her son’s achievement.
The image is simple enough — Nagalakshmi, beaming with pride at her son Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, being interviewed after a win that ensured his path to the Chess World Cup finals against Magnus Carlsen.
It’s the juxtaposition with the previous image that makes it resonate. Nagalakshmi, seated alone, wiping away tears of joy after Praggnandhaa’s win. In two images, the photographer, Maria Emilianova captured the journey of so many Indian mothers. The silent support, the selfless hard work, the tears, the sacrifice (often of their own ambitions and dreams) in aiding the success of their child.
For many, that second image never arrives.
And perhaps that’s why it resonated throughout India. The desire to witness their own parent beaming down with pride, to return the countless hours of sacrificial love with the reward of tangible success. This one image had crystallised the hopes of many Indians and given voice to their desires. To make true that old Tamil proverb: “The mother who hears her son called ‘a wise man’ will rejoice more than she did at his birth.”
THIS ��#FIDEWorldCup2023 pic.twitter.com/UgXwlWMeN1
– PhotoChess (@photochess) August 17, 2023
It’s very revealing that Emilianova (who’s been a constant presence in chess circles for a decade or more) chose to focus on Nagalakshmi for this particular image. Praggnanandhaa, the star, the chess player with the win, is blurred out in the foreground. His achievements — enduring tie-break after tie break, beating world no.2 and 3 Fabiano Caruano and Hikaru Nakamura en-route the World Cup final against Carlsen, becoming the first Indian after Viswanathan Anand to seal a spot in the FIDE Candidates — don’t exist without the subject in focus.
And Nagalakshmi herself is a study in revelatory emotion — eyes locked upon her son, her pride. A look that spoke a thousand different words but could be summarised into one – love. A smile that spoke a simple truth — it was worth it.
Praggnanandhaa’s World Cup silver shows he can meet the gold standard
You see, Praggnanandhaa’s journey started years ago, as a 10-year-old child who had become the nation’s youngest International Master, then a Grandmaster at 12. Throughout it all, Nagalakshmi was there, bringing a slice of home and semblance of stability with her stealthily cooked meals in hotel rooms (smuggling in a rice cooker). The freshly brewed coffees that made her a hit amongst the tightly knit international chess circle. The missed festivals back home, the lack of a ‘normal’ childhood, all in the pursuit of excellence in a sport the parents had stumbled upon as a means to cut down on their child’s TV viewing habits.
Worth it.
2023 will be a banner year in their household, because aside from 18-year-old Praggnandhaa’s feats, his 22-year-old sister, Vaishali, became only the third Indian woman to become a Grandmaster. They are the first brother-sister GM duo to ever exist, and Nagalakshmi was there for Vaishali’s success too, Emilianova capturing the same mixture of pride and love upon her face as she stared at her daughter.
Emilianova, who’s been photographing the family for years, has a profile picture that’s a selfie with Nagalakshmi and Praggnanandhaa. She’s captioned it ‘Selfie with the legend and her son’. No wonder. The brother-sister duo will have plenty of moments in the spotlight in the years to come, but the ‘legend’ of Indian chess, Nagalakshmi, will be there, the same mixture of pride and love on her face, through every loss, every win, every move on the board.
