Stranded in Budapest, teenage Indian chess Grand Master Leon Mendonca seeks solace in the violin
Stranded in Budapest, teenage Indian chess Grand Master Leon Mendonca seeks solace in the violin
A year after the young champion arrived in the Hungarian capital for a tournament, he’s still there. Indian teenage chess Grand Master Leon Mendonca performs in a church in Budapest.
You are a very talented young chess player from India taking part in a tournament in Budapest. After it is over, you learn that your scheduled flight home to Goa is no longer available – the first one to be cancelled due to the outbreak of the pandemic. So you are stuck in the Hungarian capital from March 2020, and still are, over a year later. So what do you do? How do you manage? Here’s one way Leon Mendonca and his father are coping: with a Pentecostal violin performance.
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So how do you manage when you, a fourteen-year-old super-talent, are stranded in Budapest for over a year? Well, play more tournaments: Leon played in a string of events, gained 150 Elo points and, at the age of 14, became India s 67th GM.
A typical tournament photo: guess who is the opponent everyone fears!
Just when it seemed possible to at last fly back to India there was a terrible surge in Covid infections back home, and it seemed wiser to remain in the fairly safe Budapest. Leon and his father Lyndon settled down in an Air-BNB, making friends with the owner of the apartment, and getting used to life in Hungary. I stayed in touch with the two, often chatting in Skype, watching the rambunctious young boy I knew from the Kramnik training camps mature into a more staid young grandmaster. What follows are a couple of the things I witnessed.