As Ashok Shrivatri tries to explain the enormity of what his son, Anuj, has accomplished, his voice is occasionally drowned out by the sound of fireworks going off in the background. It’s a fitting background sound. After all, Anuj became India’s 100th grandmaster on Sunday, and the first GM from the state of Madhya Pradesh. For the Shrivatri family in Bhopal, Diwali could not get any brighter.Anuj crossed the threshold to get the GM title after winning the 7th ASEAN Plus Individual Open Chess Championship in the Philippines. In doing so, Indian chess touched a milestone as well, its 100th grandmaster coming 38 years after Viswanathan Anand became India’s first.“Madhya Pradesh main jo soonapan chal raha tha, woh poora ho gaya (The drought that was there in Madhya Pradesh chess scene of not having a grandmaster, that’s ended),” Ashok tells The Indian Express over the noise of firecrackers in the background.Also Read | Giantkiller at age of 10: Sarbartho Mani leads wave of Indian prodigies upsetting grandmastersSunday saw the family’s long wait for Anuj to become a grandmaster. He had become an international master in 2020, just before the pandemic hit. Then, by the time the world opened up, he had other things taking up his time, like a day job.“Anuj would have become a grandmaster much earlier. He became an IM long back, at the age of 19. Then COVID hit and it cost him many years because he focussed on his studies for a few years. At that time, since there were no tournaments he could play in for a few years, so he had no option,” says Niklesh Jain, who was one of Anuj’s early coaches and then became a mentor to him.Anuj used to be a school topper who did his B Tech from Lovely Professional University (specialising in AI and Machine Learning) before securing a job with a German firm as a software engineer. While he was initially working out of home in MP, he had an offer from the firm to work out of their Germany base, the sort of offer that could change a life. But Anuj’s heart was elsewhere. He decided to forgo the cushy and stable-looking software engineering job with the German firm to chase his dreams on the canvas of 64 squares.“You need to focus at least eight to nine hours on your chess if you want to chase success in the sport. Juggling that and a software engineering job was not possible,” recounts Ashok.Story continues below this adWhen Anuj decided to quit his well-paying job, Ashok’s response was unlike any father’s you could imagine.Also Read | FIDE’s global survey reveals high rate of harassment and bias facing females in chess“Apne liye sabse pehle chess tha (For us, chess always came first),” says Ashok. He goes on to explain that chess was something that he was enamoured by in his youth, but couldn’t pursue seriously.Ashok’s decision is even more commendable when you consider the sacrifices the family made to help their son.“Whatever savings we had annually would be poured into making him a better chess player. If Anuj said he wanted to play in a tournament, anywhere in the world, I would just say, ‘Plan karlo’. He just returned from a bad trip to a tournament in Malaysia. But when he said he wanted to play in another event in the Philippines, I could not refuse. We have never thought about things like bank balance,” says Ashok, a teacher just like his wife.Story continues below this ad“There were so many times that I would take a pay cut so that I could accompany Anuj when he was young to chess tournaments. We always had one bag ready at home to travel with him for a tournament.”Hailing from Katni, Madhya Pradesh, Anuj started playing chess in 2011 as a seven-year-old. VK Tiwari was his first coach, someone who shaped his understanding of the sport. Over the years, Anuj has learnt from many coaches, like Jain, but never had a long-time coach. But he did inherit his junoon for chess from his father and an insatiable hunger to learn from wherever he could.Also Read | 11-year-old Indian-origin star Bodhana Sivanandan shatters Judit Polgar’s 38-year-old record“The two most important qualities about Anuj was his competitive spirit and his hunger for knowledge,” says Niklesh Jain. “We had gone to Spain for a tournament once where he had earned his first IM norm. On that trip I would have to wrest away chess books from his grasp, because he would get so immersed in them. I would have to do that so he could rest.”It was a combination of that junoon, an insatiable hunger for knowledge and a risky career choice that eventually gave India its 100 grandmaster.