With 44th Olympiad a week away, Tamil Nadu is going to town with chess

The story of how Mamallapuram came to be the venue began far away from Indian shores

For Tamil Nadu, the world these days revolves around 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. The black-and-white boxes are ruling the state much like the board game that is a passion for its people.

In the capital city of Chennai, the streets are painted black and white, and so are the bridges, in celebration of the mind sport these colours – the darkest and the lightest of the spectrum –represent. Across the city, life-size cutouts of a horse, dressed in a white dhoti and a white shirt and christened “Thambi” (Tamil for “little” or “younger brother”), welcome everyone to