Chess Olympiad's Thambi ain't alone: Here's a look at India's mascots

In the run-up to the 44th Chess Olympiad, which kicks off on Thursday in Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu unveiled the official logo and mascot — a chess knight called Thambi. Business Standard jogs your memory back to some of India’s popular sports mascots.

Young Brother making grand moves?

Thambi, or younger brother in Tamil, is a chess knight wearing a shirt and veshti. Thambi looks less like a chess player, and more like a brawler out of the Kamal Haasan-starrer Vikram. Standing upright with crossed muscular arms, the knight looks ready for a throwdown on the chequered battlefield.

While comparisons are also being made with the state’s Chief Minister M K Stalin, who is similarly clad in a shirt and white veshti and is the “younger brother” in the DMK family, the dress and the name are too common in the state to pin down to an individual. It can also be said that Thambi is more of a stallion than a chess knight. Either way, Thambi has quickly become an omnipresence in the state, gracing giant cut-outs, billboards, statues, and posters along with images of the CM. 

What comes as a surprise, however, is that no iconographic reference, either through the mascot or otherwise, has yet been made by the host state to their home-grown grandmaster and Indian chess icon Viswanathan Anand. 

The Old Classic

The buzz around Thambi reminds one of Appu — arguably the first ever mascot for the Asian Games. Appu was inspired by a real elephant, Kuttinarayanan, who at the start of the games was six years old and one of the 36 elephants brought to Delhi on a special train from the Guruvayoor temple complex in Kerala for the welcome ceremony. Appu appeared as a line-drawn image of a happy, prancing young elephant. Besides cementing elephants as an iconic representation of India’s land, fauna and culture, Appu also began the tradition of assigning mascots based on national symbols of the Asiad’s host countries. Found on bags, T-shirts, postcards, and other collectibles, the happy but simplistic elephant mascot has endured as a beloved icon.

New games, new faces

When Delhi hosted the Commonwealth Games in 2010, a new animal was chosen as the mascot — India’s national animal, the tiger. Nicknamed Shera, this time the CWG organisation committee gave the mascot a background story, official jerseys, as well as a theme song. Moreover, the official website also made sure to specify his iconic associations including “majesty, power, charisma, intelligence, and grace”. The site also roots Shera in mythology, highlighting the tiger’s role as a steed for the Hindu goddess Durga. Shera too was marketed on posters, t-shirts, stamps, and other collectibles.

More recently, the ICC World Cup 2011, hosted jointly by India, Bangladesh, and Nepal brought back the elephant in Stumpy. In May, Union Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports Anurag Singh Thakur launched the mascot Dhakad, a white bull, for the Khelo India Youth Games.