India is on the Mars of achievement, Tamil Nadu over the moon. And Chennai, where Gukesh Dommaraju, the world chess king was born, is celebrating the victory like it has celebrated few things in recent memory.

I know next to nothing of the game. But I know enough to see, like anyone else, that Gukesh has won more than a game and a title. He has won a moment of epiphanic rapture. For three reasons: first, he is the youngest in the world ever to have got where he has; second, he has got there after besting a world-class and widely-respected player, Ding Liren, the 17th world chess champion from 2023-2024 and three-time Chinese chess champion; third, he has shown himself to be human, so real, as a son to his father and a mentee to his coach, in his victory.

To break down in tears after a win is the most natural thing. To be oneself, to hide no feeling, betray no emotion, may be stoic and big. But to do what Gukesh did — dissolve into tears in his father’s embrace, and then his coach’s — was something I responded to, checking tears of my own.

Ding, at 32, is significantly older than our winner. And his reaction after the defeat had to show the seniority. And we must hand it to him that it did. And how! Holding his disappointment in a tight coil inside his mind, his heart, Ding smiled during the press conference called after the game. There is a great Elton John song — “Sorry seems to be the hardest word”. One can say, adapting that —to be able to smile in defeat is the second hardest thing. He said, “I’ve played my best tournament in the year. I have no regrets. Thank you, I will continue to play.” And then, a few moments later, said, “No game tomorrow” and let his lungs and his voice box emit a sound which is indescribable. It was not a laugh, it was not a grunt. It was not a sigh, and it was not a moan, But it was all these and more. It was a meditative aspiration. There was resignation in it, there was pathos. Ding may or may not be Buddhist. He may or may be Confucian. But he is possessed of a master maturity. He did not say his defeat did not matter. Of course, it mattered. He did not say his defeat has not affected him. Of course, it has. What his face, his taut face, his tense neck muscles, his dry carotids said was ‘I am overcoming my emotions. I am training myself to have no regrets.’ And as he left the room, he walked swiftly, without a sideward or a backward look, into his future. His future in regret subsumed in non-regret.

And Gukesh!

I have not heard in recent times, or even in more than recent times, in a long time, a statement like his about Ding: “He is a true champion.” Wow. I felt proud as an Indian, as a Chennaivasi, that Gukesh should show what being Indian means. Victories have come to be celebrated with fireworks, dance and delirium. And with that singularly un-lovely, self-righteous sign held up before cameras — V. Gukesh may have been compelled to show that V and I would not begrudge him that moment. But he has placed his reaction on the shelf of high-mindedness. There was no condescension in Gukesh’s praise. He gave it out of humility, respect.

And I want to add here that while watching the two, I could not forget the fact that here were two young men representing two of the world’s greatest civilisations — those of China and India. And, in a sense, representing the cultures of Hiuen Tsang, the 7th-century Chinese-Buddhist monk, scholar, traveller, and translator, and Nagarjuna, adviser to a king of the Satavahana dynasty, which ruled the Deccan plateau in the second century.

Gukesh, you have won in your victory. And you have won more — you have won the hearts of millions by your dignity in victory. I hope millions in China have watched you!

And Ding, you have won in your defeat. And you have won more —the hearts of millions by your grace in the hour of unsuccess, turning defeat into undefeatable grace. I hope millions will continue to watch you on India’s television and social media channels.

I want to mention here another great moment in sport we experienced not long ago. When Neeraj Chopra’s javelin throw was bettered in the Paris Olympics by that of Pakistan’s Arshad Nadeem, Neeraj’s mother, Saroj Devi, said that Nadeem was also like a son to her. Nadeem, responding, said that he was grateful for the fact that she prayed for him as well and said that she is also like a mother to him.

Gukesh’s mother, Padmakumari (a name also derived, like that of Neeraj’s mother, from ‘lotus’), reacted to the news of her son’s historic win with tears. I imagine the reaction in Ding’s family as being very different and yet very similar since his parents have mentored his chess no less than Gukesh’s. I would like to believe that like their son, his parents too believe the game was fair, and that they have no regrets.

All sports in their competitive moments have become miniature battles. Cricket played by India with teams from its neighbours can see ballistic moments. Not because the teams want them to be so but because we want them to go into battle-mode.

And of politics and politicians in hours of victory and defeat, I would rather not say anything because I do not want to move away from the singularly civil ‘rasa’ created by the chess tournament just concluded. Except to observe that in the chaturanga of elections today, we are not likely to hear the victor call the vanquished ‘a true champion’, and the one who has been defeated do that most difficult thing — not scowl but smile in defeat. In 1958, the then prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the elder statesman, C. Rajagopalachari, sparred in public on the subject of India’s official language. Rajagopalachari said to the prime minister in a public speech that democracy cannot be run by men of ill-temper, only by men of equable temper. Gukesh and Ding have a lesson to give about equable temper in democratic reactions.