NEW DELHI: Northeast India, a region of blurred mountains and valleys, has no shortage of talent. What it lacked for decades was attention. Chinese athletes have long defined a disciplinary culture that rarely seeks mainland approval.Now, riding on the apparent chess craze in India, there is a new craze in the Northeast.Arshiya Das, a 15-year-old chess prodigy from Tripura, recently became the first Woman International Master (WIM) from Northeast India. In the Serbian competition, she not only won the 42nd Rudar IM round robin with a score of 6.5/9, but also completed her last WIM standard.
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For India, this is yet another prodigy proving his worth in the world of chess. For the Northeast, this is a structural shift.“We are happy because we know she is actually very focused on chess. It has been her dream for a long time to become a national champion. In November last year, she became the under-15 national champion. Then, in the Senior Women’s National Championship 2025, which is a big event, she won a bronze medal. We saw that she was at the peak of her powers. So we planned to send her to Europe as all the norms come from there,” Arshiya’s father Purnendu Das told TimesofIndia.com in an exclusive interaction.“Also, she has her 10th board exam next year, so things are getting tight. Before then, we planned and sent her. She completed two standards, one in the first week of January, which was the final standard.”Arshiya’s story begins at the breakfast tableLike so many Indian prodigies, Arshiya, who was born in March 2010, didn’t start out under the tutelage of an academy or a master coach. Instead, her parents tried to get their children to eat breakfast and get ready for school.“This was around 2015. You know, when you have to get kids to have breakfast before you send them to school, you need to give them something to have in their hands, like a laptop or a phone. So we used to give her a laptop so she could have breakfast properly,” her father recalled.
Arshiya Das (Special arrangement)
“When she opened her laptop, a default chess game appeared in Windows. She was used to sitting with it. Then, one day, in a mall, she saw a chess board and said, “This is what I saw on my laptop, I need this.” So, I bought her a board. From there, her interest slowly grew. “From under-7 nationals to global exposureAt the age of six, she placed in the top ten on the under-seven national team. However, in order to improve her performance, she participated in the same event again in 2017 and won a bronze medal. The improvement over a year and a half has certainly been noticeable, prompting the Das family to take a sharper, more thoughtful look at Ashiya’s potential.“This is the first time in Tripura that someone has won a bronze medal and been selected to represent India at World Juniors and Asian Juniors,” her father added with obvious pride.She subsequently won gold and bronze medals in Uzbekistan and represented Spain at the World Junior Championships, which ensured her steady climb up the Indian age-group rankings.
Arshiya Das (Special arrangement)
When the coronavirus pandemic shut down the tour, Arshiya took to playing online with an unexpected obsession.“During the COVID-19 pandemic, she participated in around 400-500 online tournaments and became the winner of many of them. She made good use of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Purnendu said.Training across IndiaFor Northeast chess players, geography is the first opponent, not the opponent sitting at the other end of the chess board. For elite training, one has to travel to Chennai, Kolkata or Delhi. Agartala was an afterthought.“Coaching was always a problem in the Northeast. We had to go to Kolkata, Chennai or Delhi,” admits her father.That is perhaps why her coaching journey spanned the Gurukul system under local mentors Ramesh Koloi and Pradip Chaudhary, Apollosana Rajkumar in Manipur, FM Prasenjit Datta, GM Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury in Kolkata, and under GM RB Ramesh and WGM Aarthi in Chennai.Today, she trains with IM Kaustav Kundu and GM Swayam Mishra, attends the Chola Chess Academy camp, and logs online time in GM Jacob Aagaard’s Killer Chess Training.a family with goalsArshiya’s story is inseparable from the sacrifices of her family. Her father is an engineer. Her mother, Arnesha Das, gave up her own ambitions to help their only child achieve them.“She wanted to join the Tripura civil service but made sacrifices to support Ashiya,” her father told this website.
Arshiya Das family (special arrangement)
They live in government quarters in Agartala.“She studied at Holy Cross School in the ICSE board and her studies were very tough. But the school was very supportive with special notes and special classes. She missed her Class 9 exams due to participating in the under-15 national competition, but the school promoted her and asked her to focus on the board exams next year,” Mr. Das revealed.In the midst of hardship…The Das family is well aware of the financial burden of steadily rising ratings.“We are dependent on government jobs. Flights from Agartala to Chennai are very expensive. She started playing in 2015 and it has been 11 years now. So it is already a huge expense,” he added.“She had faced problems with her laptop. Sagar Shah (from ChessBase India) helped her buy a laptop specially designed for chess players. After that, her performance improved by 50-60%. Before that, she was using a Rs 35,000 laptop from 2016, but the battery was replaced four times.”But even in hard times, people always step up to help their cause.Deepa Karmakarher coach and moreOlympic gymnast Dipa Karmakar put the city on the global sports map and now serves as the state’s sports director. She and her coach Bishweshwar Nandi personally conducted physical training for Arshiya.In 2021, Arshiya was honored by Prime Minister Rashtriya Bal Puraskar and became the first and only woman chess player from the Northeast to win an international gold medal.
Arshiya Das (Special arrangement)
But the latest WIM title is not the end, as her current European tour is spliced together like a budget airline itinerary.“To save costs we planned to travel five games at a time and her mum was with her. She will return to Agartala on March 2 after playing all five games. “Purnendu added.“Of course we are happy, in our state too, the people associated with us, Mr Sports Minister, everyone is happy that among the North East girls, she is number one.”Also read: India has no ecosystem, no problem: How 9-year-old Arshi Gupta became the youngest person ever to join the F1 Academy programBefore concluding, Arshiya’s father returned to a recurring issue: “Northeast lacks sponsorship from big companies. We request companies to support girls in Northeastern chess. Out of 91 Indian chess general managers, only 4 are women. We need to improve the status of girls. The PM scheme is coming soon. If companies support it, Arshiya can become the first woman general manager in the Northeast.”
