Exclusive | ‘Motherhood not a liability’: How India’s No.1 Koneru Humpy balances chess and family | Chess News

Koneru Humpy. (PTI Photo)

NEW DELHI: In the quiet, black-and-white corridors of chess, where the ticking clock echoes louder than the heartbeat, Koneru Humpy remains seated like an ancient banyan tree — rooted, rigid, and regal.
Behind her stillness stays the tremors of sacrifice as the real championship for India’s top-ranked woman in chess isn’t always over 64 squares.
“I do miss my daughter a lot,” she tells TimesofIndia.com during an exclusive interaction. “Our tournaments last 15–20 days, and I travel often. She enjoys her stay with grandparents when I am away. So that way I’m fortunate that they’re very close to her, and she gets all the attention which is needed.”

Humpy, two-time World Rapid Champion, became a chess Grandmaster in 2002 at the age of 15.
At that time, she was the youngest woman to achieve the title, making him no stranger to medals or media glare — the most recent one after she was made the brand ambassador for SBG’s online chess initiative.
Life runs at a rapid pace when you are winning, in general. For Humpy, 2014 marked the start of a new journey — her marriage with Anvesh Dasari. A few years later, they were blessed with a baby girl, Ahana.
Her commitment toward her child and family kept her away from the game for some time.
“I still remember when I won the 2019 World Rapid Championship, I hadn’t been playing for nearly one and a half years,” Humpy says. “I took a break in 2017 and started playing again around November or December 2018. When I came back to chess, practice and preparation were there, but I had become a much tougher person. You know, raising a child meant sleepless nights. I learned I’m even capable of doing the work without having a proper food. Earlier, that wasn’t the case — if something went wrong, it would immediately affect my performance. But motherhood helped me adjust to all of that and made me mentally tougher.”
Motherhood, for Humpy, was never a distraction as she continues to wear it not like a weight, but like armor.

“I always feel motherhood is a strength. It cannot make you sidestep your profession,” she accepts with a grin.
As a child prodigy from Vijayawada, a small city in Andhra Pradesh, Humpy didn’t have grand academies or training partners on call.
What she had was a father looking after his child.
Back then, it was Humpy’s father who would help a budding chess star — someone who rarely showed interest in poring over dense books filled with opening theories or classic moves — as she prepared for upcoming tournaments.
“I’m not a book reader at all. I’d love to read on a laptop or a tab, but not in books,” she laughs. “During my childhood, my dad used to do all the preparation — he would get those books, have them copied, and make separate bindings with the lines to play and all that. I was never into that kind of work. It was only after 2012 that I started preparing on my own. But by then, we were already used to laptops and software.”
In a society that often romanticises maternal sacrifice into silence, here is a mother, who continues to redefine ambition, by not choosing between motherhood and mastery.
As for her daughter, there is no checkmate path mapped out.
“I never want to pressurise her,” Humpy tells TimesofIndia.com. “For me, it’s about letting her do what she enjoys, whatever profession she wants to pursue — it’s fine. I just want her to grow up as a positive person. That’s more important to me than which profession she chooses.”
In a country now experiencing a chess renaissance, Koneru Humpy remains an epitome of calmness. “As for staying calm under pressure, I think it comes naturally to me. Even as a child, I was like that. People often say they couldn’t tell whether I won or lost a game because I always maintained the same calm,” she adds.
Behind her calm demeanour lies a strict routine: “sleep early, wake up early, and that helps me stay composed and well-prepared”.
“During tournaments, I prefer going for walks to get fresh air since we spend most of our time indoors. When I’m at home, I make sure to go to the gym every day to maintain physical fitness. Yoga is great, of course, but I personally enjoy more physical activity, especially because we sit for long hours while playing,” she continues.
The 37-year-old GM readies her bid for the Women’s Grand Prix in Pune (April 13-24), Norway Chess (May 26-June 6), then the World Cup (July 5-29) in Georgia.
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“I think I definitely need to change my strategy for the World Cup because it’s a knockout tournament. But I’ll focus on that after I complete these two classical events—Norway Chess and the Grand Prix. Probably after Norway, I’ll start preparing specifically for the knockout format. Yes, I need to do something different for that,” says a mother on a mission.
In a world with kids learning the Sicilian Defence before the alphabet, Koneru Humpy comes across as a pillar, a mother who seems reluctant to make motherhood her excuse.