NEW DELHI: The bus pulled away shortly after 8 pm. Md Imran, famished after an eight-hour drive, had pulled away during a scheduled ten-minute stopover in Bratislava, Slovakia, looking only for biscuits and coffee. I made it back to the platform in time and frantically waved for the driver to wait. The driver looked straight at him, waved him dismissively from his seat, and drove off anyway.Everything Imran owned disappeared with that bus. His Schengen visa passport. His US student visa, the one intended to lead him to a scholarship at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) this fall. His phone, his power banks, his diary, close to Rs 6 – 7 lakh worth of gear. All this rolled towards Budapest without him, the night before a tournament that he still had to play last June. At just 16, Imran was stuck alone in a foreign country. Fortunately, as it turns out, being alone in a foreign country was something I already had a decade of practice with.
A boy who was just watching TV
Imran didn’t start playing chess because someone saw a prodigy in him. He started at the age of seven because his parents, in Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh, wanted him away from the screens.“I think it was introduced to me just to make me stay away from all kinds of electronic devices, because I was consuming a lot of electronic media then,” Imran told TimesofIndia.com during an exclusive interaction. “I watched TV from morning to night.”Chess was one of many activities that his parents tried for him; skating, swimming, and gymnastics were others, but it was the one that stuck.
Md Imran (Special Arrangements)
He started beating everyone at his local academy under coach Leela Kumar, who first suggested he try tournaments. What followed was an explosion rather than a progression. In less than a year, Imran gained about 900 rating points, jumping from 1035 to 1958.He was considering overseas tournaments and had set up a sponsorship of two to three lakh rupees to finance them. Then COVID hit. Sponsorship evaporates.“When we asked about the amount, they said it’s not possible,” I recalled. “Even their contingencies have been worse, because they can’t produce that amount.”Chess, for two years, has moved almost entirely online.When the over-the-board tournaments resumed, Imran’s family had already been priced out of the version of this trip where an adult travels with him. In 2023, he made occasional trips abroad with friends or his mother. Then, in June 2024, at 14 years old, I started traveling alone.“The only reason why I was traveling alone and I chose to travel alone is just to reduce the cost,” he said clearly. “If I could have had one of my parents or a legal guardian … I would have to pay for an additional person. We are not at all in that state.”
“You realize very quickly that the systems are failing you”
What happened next reads less like a sports story and more like an account of survival. Last month, Imran arrived in Budapest last midnight with nothing. The station was closed, so I couldn’t report. No hotel would have taken him without a physical passport, as European law requires it for check-in.He ran to the drivers of other bus companies, asking for help. FlixBus chat support told him to file a complaint online.I had a phone. He was lucky for that.“Usually, I don’t,” he said of traveling with a charged device. “I was traveling with two phones and two power banks, but luckily I had taken a step with my main phone in hand. It was my absolute life saver.” “I have submitted a series of official complaints to both FlixBus and the authorities, but I have not received an iota of help,” Imran said. “The cold truth is that they have done absolutely nothing, and my conclusion is that they are completely unreliable.”For most people, this is the point where the story stops. For Imran, it was the starting line of the First Saturday Round Robin, a tournament he had traveled to specifically to chase a Grandmaster norm. He had every reason to retire. I had a high fever. He had spent his morning shuttling between police stations and the United States Embassy instead of preparing the opening. I chose to play anyway.I finished 7/9, undefeated, and claimed my first Grandmaster norm. Later, the second norm came with an identical race 7/9 at the 5th Rigo Janos Memorial.Three weeks earlier, he had been ranked 2460 with zero standards. Now he is 2496, he needs only one open norm to complete the title.
On the brink of becoming a Grand Master
“I have never had real and consistent coaching,” he told this website, having returned to India after being issued a new passport. “I always feel like I’m wasting money on them, and they’ll never be able to dedicate the next time to me anyway. So, I decided to do everything alone.”I became an International Master only in 2024. I crossed 2500 only. The two standards of GM came in the same way, apart from short and targeted help: a deal with IM Radoslav Gajek between 2023 and 2025, and Levin Guy, an Israeli player ranked 2473, who arrived after learning about the Bratislava incident and offered to second him for free.
Md Imran with his standard GM (Special Arrangements)
The volume behind the self-taught rise is staggering on its own. About 257 games ranked in 2024 and 283 in 2025, by his account, the highest of any player in the world that year.“I would never advise anyone to go down this road,” he said. “I did not even have a single ideal resource that a player should still become an IM. I contradict every ideal way of improvement in chess.”Asked what he would really say to anyone trying to follow his path anyway: “The only thing you need is to believe in yourself,” he said. “If you believe in God, then of course you must believe in God more than yourself. And then, you have to believe in yourself. That’s how it is.”
A family of four, and a debt that precedes the bus
Imran’s house is small against the scale of what is brought: his mother, a housewife; his father, a 22-year-old policeman now stationed in Visakhapatnam; and a younger brother, four years behind him.“We’re not very healthy financially or whatever,” Imran said. “I think we still have about 40, 50 lakh rupees of loan that my father took for the last two years alone.” Bratislava’s losses only piled on top. “It’s not better,” I said. “We are definitely under a lot of difficulty even now after achieving these two standards.”
“This is the first thing because I slowly started to lose interest in chess,
International Teacher Md Imran
When Imran became an International Master two years ago, he expected his status to be noticed. Andhra Pradesh had not produced an IM in seven or eight years, he said, and its own sports policy promised cash prizes for FM and IM titles. Imran and his family introduced him a year and a half ago.“So far we have no help to get that amount,” he said. “I have no idea.”That silence, more than the bus in Bratislava, is what actually erodes his relationship with the game.“This is the first because I slowly started to lose interest in chess,” he admits. “The only people who respected my situation and respected my position were the United States chess team,” he said of his UTRGV scholarship.He describes his relationship with the sport now in surprisingly neutral terms: “I don’t necessarily love chess, but I don’t hate it either. I just want to finish this title. I don’t have a big passion behind me. It’s only because of the support that I didn’t receive like the others.”
The call for help
Now I have a new passport; his Schengen visa application is under review. His F-1 visa was already approved before the tragic bus accident. The visa must be reissued in their new passport by a US consular office.READ ALSO: India gets its 98th GM! Both parents chess coaches, 10th board exam forced a break: The creation of Aswath SHe e-mailed the embassy in Budapest and the consulate in Hyderabad, reporting the emergency, but neither responded, leaving him with no confirmed route or timeline to get the visa reissued before his August 23 orientation deadline.“I really want someone to help me, in any way they possibly can,” he said. “I really hope I can get a visa before then, because I definitely can’t afford to miss it.”