The April 15, 2018 Metro report on how Bristy’s mother mortgaged her jewellery to send her to the Asian Youth Chess Championship in Thailand

The Class IX student of Memari Rasiklal Smriti Balika Vidyalaya used to spend six hours daily travelling on local trains and packed buses between Memari and Minto Park, where she trained at the Alekhine Chess Club in Gorky Sadan.

Before going to Thailand, she had to skip a couple of international tournaments for want of money. Her prize money was kept aside to fund her travel but often that turned out to be too little.

Sunita Sigtia, whose NGO works for promising sportspersons from poor families, contacted Bristy’s father in May 2018 and had the teenager come over to her office in Chowringhee.

Bristy, who idolises Grandmaster Koneru Humpy, has not looked back since. In June 2018, she won silver in the Commonwealth Chess Championship in Delhi.

In April this year, she was part of the Indian team that won gold in rapid chess at the Asian Youth Chess Championship held at Sri Lanka.

In June, she won the state sub-junior championships held at a school in Anandapur.

Mukherjee thanked Sigtia’s foundation for all the help. “Bristy never complained but she was aware of our circumstances and it affected her game,” he said. “She can now focus fully on her game because the financial worries are gone.”

Apart from funding her travel, SiiRF has got Bristy a laptop. “I had been practising on the laptop for seven to eight hours daily in the run-up to the Commonwealth games,” Bristy said.

Sigtia said she was “very happy with Bristy’s success” but wanted her to be “firmly rooted”. “This is just the beginning. I have told her to keep the hard work going.”

Sigtia, who who runs a fabric business, is the Indian face of Fans4Roger, the official fan club of Federer. She makes it a point to spend two weeks of summer in England every year to watch the legend in action at Wimbledon.

But this year, she could not make it for business reasons. She said she was upset on missing the ritualistic trip but good news from various quarters of her foundation has made her happy. If Bristy won gold in Delhi, Arinjeeta Dey, a 10-year-old karateka from Barasat, sponsored by the foundation, has won gold at an international tournament in Croatia. “I am doing my best. God has been kind,” she said.

Two summers ago, a 13-year-old girl from Burdwan was struggling to keep her promising chess career afloat for want of funds.

On Sunday, Bristy Mukherjee won gold in a major tournament in the national capital, beating the top seed in one of the matches.

The teenager owes her success to Roger Federer, the tennis legend who is fighting for a record ninth crown at Wimbledon.

Bristy, 15, won gold in the Under-16 category in the 2019 Commonwealth Chess Championship held in Delhi from June 29 to July 7.

The victory is her latest in a string of achievements since her game got a lifeline last summer when an NGO named SiiRF — Some Immensely Inspired Roger (Federer) Fans — pledged to fund her training and sponsor her logistics.

Sunita Sigtia, the founder of SiiRF, is a die-hard fan of Federer and she started the foundation inspired by his charity.

Bristy was undefeated in the tournament, winning five of seven games and drawing two.

Her toughest game was in the sixth round against Jain Nityata, a top-ranking player in the tournament, from Madhya Pradesh.

After a gruelling match that lasted four-and-a-half hours, Bristy emerged triumphant.

She needed a draw to secure the pole position in the seventh and last round on Sunday. “I was a little nervous and not very aggressive. I played safe and drew the match,” she told Metro over phone from Delhi, hours before boarding a flight to Chennai to play another national-level tournament.

The teenager’s career found a fresh lease of life after getting support from the NGO. The support followed a Metro report (April 15, 2018) on how Bristy’s mother had to mortgage her jewellery to send her to the Asian Youth Chess Championship in Thailand in April 2018.

She had won silver in the Under-14 girls’ category of the tournament, missing out on gold by half a point.

Her father Debasish Mukherjee, who was a grocer, has rented out a portion of their house in East Burdwan’s Memari to run the family.

He had to shut down his shop because travelling with Bristy to tournaments left him with little time for business.