ISEO day 3: Little kings of chess keep their eyes on the pawns ... and the competition

Despite greasy palms, children are excited and cheery.

KARACHI: After capturing his opponent’s pawn, Aman remarks, “An eye for an eye.” On the first floor of the Karachi High School, hosting the International Schools Educational Olympiad (ISEO) 2011, students practice their chess skills 30 minutes before showdown.

Aman and Abbas from the Karachi Grammar School and Yash Gandhi from Avicenna are totally engrossed in the game — their ambition and intensity is apparent.

“It’s an ancient game. It’s 5,000 years old!” says Aman, with an air of sagacity. “I play offence, Yash plays defence and Abbas plays adaptability,” he explains each player’s forte.

Yash, apart from winning four scrabble matches the day before, is also participating in the photography competition of the Olympiad. The pictures he has chosen for the competition are close-ups of a mother pigeon and its newborn baby.

The competition is tough and all the students know it. Their nerves are shot, their palms are greasy but they want to and are having fun.

Apart from games of strategy like chess and scrabble, day three of the Olympiad has the students singing, dancing and playing instruments.

Sarah Haider from the Jaffer Public School is the only girl participating in the beginner’s level guitar competition. She is not nervous about the competition, she says, but is just keen on giving her best performance.

Ali Haider from The Faheem’s School is another contender in the same category. He is self-taught and he will play his own take on the national anthem in C-major that he devised a night before. He got the crowd to stand — and not only because he was playing the national anthem.

Really proud of his performance and guitar, a rather puffed-up Ali said he was not impressed by the competition. “It would have been competition if people played a solo of one of Steve Vai’s classics.”

Urooj and Sheraz Moin are two contestants in the singing competition and are students from the Karachi International School. Anticipating their turn, Urooj is absolutely calm while Sheraz, her elder brother is extremely nervous. “The competition will be very tough because last year, I faced well-trained opponents,” he says. Sheraz is more nervous because he sees Fuzon’s keyboardist Immu in the crowd, one of his icons in Pakistani music.

Nine-graders Laiqa Dilip of the Aga Khan School and Shaheryar Shahid from the Gulistan School were trumped after seeing so many schools and such prepared contestants.

Fatima Rafi was among the selected students that had come from Lahore for the competition. She did not face any issues from her parents when her school nominated her. “However, they did ask me to win,” she says sheepishly.

Talking to The Express Tribune, Mrs Parveen Kassim, the Karachi High School principal and ISEO chairperson, says the Olympiad is all about enhancing the students’ creative streak. “On Saturday, the children had a lot of fun dancing and most of them were very good at it, especially at classical and folk dancing, even though it is nowhere to be found in schools.”

She regrets that not many schools from other cities and outside Pakistan could make it to the competition this year, but she assures that the school aims at a larger competition next year.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 31^st,  2011.