Personal Life
In August 2010, Anand joined the Board of Directors of Olympic Gold Quest, a foundation for promoting and supporting India's elite sportspersons and potential young talent. On 24 December 2010 Anand was guest of honour on the grounds of Gujarat university, Ahmedabad, where 20,486 players created a new world record of simultaneous chess play at single venue.
Briefly, Anand lived with his wife Aruna in Spain and they have one son.
His hobbies are reading, swimming, and listening to music. He is married to Aruna Anand and has a son born on 9 April 2011. Anand's son is named Akhil and in the Tamil tradition will be called "Anand Akhil" (no surname). The family is now based in Chennai, India.
Anand has been regarded as an unassuming person with a reputation for refraining from political and psychological ploys and instead focusing on his game. This has made him a well-liked figure throughout the chess world for two decades, evidenced by the fact that Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik, and Magnus Carlsen, of whom the former two were rivals for the World Championship throughout Anand's career, each aided him in preparing for the World Chess Championship 2010. Anand is sometimes known as the "Tiger of Madras".
Anand was the only sportsperson to have been invited for the dinner hosted by the Indian PM Manmohan Singh for US President Barack Obama on 7 November 2010.
Read more about this topic: Viswanathan Anand
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“The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people. To ‘see the light’ too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)