NEW DELHI: In a region where borders blur into mountains and valleys fold into one another, India’s Northeast has never lacked talent. What it has lacked, for decades, is attention.
Its athletes have long defined a culture of discipline that rarely seeks validation from the mainland.
And today, riding on India's unequivocal chess boom, the Northeast has found its latest sensation.
At 15, Tripura's chess prodigy Arshiya Das recently became the first Woman International Master (WIM) from Northeast The nation. Playing in Serbia, she not only won the 42nd Rudar IM Round Robin tournament with a score of 6.5/9 but also completed her final WIM norm.
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For The nation, it is another prodigy proving her worth in the globe of chess. For the Northeast, it is a tectonic shift.
“We are very happy because we know she is actually very dedicated to chess. It was her dream for a long time to become national champion. She became Under-15 National Champion in November last year. Then, in the Senior National Women’s Championships 2025, which is a big tournament, she got a bronze medal. We saw that she is at her peak.
So we planned to send her to Europe because all the norms come from there,” Arshiya's father Purnendu Das told TimesofIndia.com during an exclusive interaction.
“Also, next year, she has 10th board exams, so things are getting tight. Before that, we planned this and sent her. She completed two norms, one in the first week of January, and this was the final norm.”
Like a plethora of Indian prodigies, Arshiya, born in March 2010, did not start in an academy or under a master coach.
Rather, it began with her parents trying to get their child to eat breakfast and get ready for school.
“This was around 2015. You know, when you have to make the children eat breakfast before sending them to school, you need to give them something in their hands, like a laptop or a mobile phone. So we used to give her a laptop so that she would eat her breakfast properly," her father recalled.
"When she would open the laptop, in Windows, there was a default chess game.
She got used to sit with it. Then, one day, in a mall, she saw a chessboard and said, ‘This is the thing I saw on the laptop, I need this.’ So, I bought her a board. From there, her interest grew slowly.”
At six, she finished in the top 10 in the Under-7 nationals. However, with an aim to better the scores, she participated again in the same tournament next year in 2017 and won bronze. The progress over a year was indeed noticeable, and it prompted the Das family to look at Arshiya's potential with a sharper, more deliberate lens.
“From Tripura, this was the first time someone got bronze and got selected for the World Cadet and Asian Youths to represent Bharat,” her father added with palpable pride.
International exposure followed as gold and bronze medals in Uzbekistan and a representation in the World Cadet Championship in Spain ensured her steady climb through India’s age-group hierarchy.
When COVID shut down the circuit, Arshiya started playing online with unforeseen obsession.
“During COVID, she played around 400-500 online tournaments and became champion in many of them. She utilised COVID very well,” Purnendu said.
For a chess player in the Northeast, geography is the first opponent, not the one sitting at the other end of the board. For elite training, one must travel to Chennai, Kolkata, or Delhi. Agartala is an afterthought.
“From the Northeast, coaching was always a problem. We had to go to Kolkata, Chennai, or Delhi,” her father admitted.
And that is perhaps why her coaching journey spans local mentors Ramesh Koloi and Pradip Chaudhary, Apollosana Rajkumar in Manipur, FM Prasenjit Dutta, GM Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury in Kolkata, and the Gurukul system under GM RB Ramesh and WGM Aarthi in Chennai.
Today, she trains with IM Kaustav Kundu and GM Swayams Mishra, attends Chola Chess Academy camps, and logs online hours with GM Jacob Aagaard’s Killer Chess Training.
Arshiya’s story is inseparable from her family’s sacrifices. Her father is an engineer. Her mother, Arnesha Das, stepped away from her own ambitions to aid the ambitions of their only child.
“She wanted to join the Tripura Civil Service but sacrificed to support Arshiya,” her father told this website.
“She studies in Holy Cross School, ICSE board, very tough. But school is very supportive with special notes and special classes.
She missed the Class 9 exam due to Under-15 Nationals, but school promoted her and asked her to focus on board exams next year,” Mr Das revealed.
The Das family is well aware of the financial burden that comes with steady improvement in ratings.
“We depend on a administration job. Flights from Agartala to Chennai are very expensive. She’s been playing since 2015, 11 years now. So it has already been a huge expenditure,” he added.
“She once had a laptop problem. Sagar Shah (from ChessBase India) helped and got her a specially designed laptop for chess players. After that, her performance increased 50–60%. Before that, she used a Rs 35,000 laptop since 2016, but the battery changed four times.”
But even amid the hardships, people have always come forward to help their cause.
Dipa Karmakar, the Olympic gymnast who put the city on the global sports map, is now the state’s sports director.
She and her coach Bishweshwar Nandi personally trained Arshiya physically.
In 2021, Arshiya received the Prime Minister’s Rashtriya Bal Puraskar for becoming the first and only girl chess player from the Northeast to receive an international gold medal.
PM Narendra modi interacting with Arshiya Das (Special Arrangements)
But the latest WIM title is not the end of the road, as her current European tour is stitched together like a budget airline itinerary.
“We planned five tournaments in one trip to save costs, and her mother is with her.
After playing all five, she will return to Agartala on March 2,” Purnendu added.
“We are definitely very happy, and in our state also, people associated with us, the sports minister sir, everyone is very happy that among girls from the Northeast, she is the first.”
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Before concluding, Arshiya’s father circled back to a recurring concern: “The Northeast lacks huge companies for sponsorship. We request companies to support girl children in Northeast chess. Out of 91 Indian GMs, only 4 are women. We need to boost girls. PM schemes are coming. If companies support, Arshiya can become the first female GM from the Northeast.”
