India’s bridge team at Asian Games: IITians, industrialist, art collector

Since the early 1990s, Kiran Nadar and Bachiraju Satyanarayana, an IIT-Delhi alumni, have been bridge partners. Kiran, the wife of HCL Technologies founder-billionaire Shiv Nadar, is a well-known art collector who has spend a small fortune to acquire 5,000 paintings and installations which are on display for public viewing at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art. She has also struck gold in bridge. At the Commonwealth Nations Bridge Championships held in February at Gold Coast, Australia, she and Satyanarayana were members of the Indian team that won gold.

Another member of the Asiad team is Hema Deora, wife of the late Union minister and MP Murli Deora. Hema, a bridge aficionado writes newspaper and magazine columns on the game. The team also includes the husband-wife pair, industrialists Rajeev and Himani Khandelwal.

Raju Tolani hasn’t taken his family on a “proper holiday” since the time he can remember.

“You must ask my family about my passion for bridge. I don’t think my wife will be too amused because even my travel plans involve a destination where there is a bridge tournament,” says Tolani. “I tell them to hire a taxi and see the city while I pay bridge.”

Nadar has the reputation of being a fierce bidder at auction houses around the world — she paid Rs 16.42 crore for S H Raza’s ‘Saurashtra’. The rush of chasing a masterpiece, she says, is only matched by the anticipation of the “hand” she might get while representing India.

“I have represented India half a dozen times. But to be part of a medal-winning sport at the Asian Games is a fantastic feeling. There is a lot of excitement but there is also nervousness because if it is a medal-winning sport then it is up to us to get a few medals for India,” Nadar says.

Nadar and Deora, both in their 60s, will be staying in a hotel during the games. “I think we may stay for a day at the Games Village,” Nadar says.

“Four years ago in China I saw a number of teenagers playing bridge because it is part of the curriculum in schools. There is potential in India,” she says.

Nadar has plans to introduce bridge to the 11-plus age group students at the Shiv Nadar School, Faridabad, from the next academic year. “The IITs popularised bridge in the 1980s but now the IITs interaction with bridge has died down,” Nadar says.

Satyanarayana is a product of IIT’s bridge assembly line. He got hooked to the game while watching his seniors play during his five-year integrated MS Programme in Physics at IIT Delhi in the late 1970s. “It took me almost two years to develop decent skills and judgement to be able to compete at national level tournaments. Only in 1986, was I able to reach the semi-finals in Ruia Gold Cup (national championships),” Satyanarayana, part of the top management at HCL, says.

The presence of IIT alumni in bridge is overwhelming. National selector Anand Samant is a professor at IIT-Bombay while the two others of the selection panel — Vinay Desai and S K Iyengar — are also IIT graduates.

Bridge Federation of India president Prasad Keni counters the popular perception that bridge is only a sport for the rich and famous. “There are players who have been recruited by the Railways because of how good they are in bridge like Sumit Mukherjee, Debabrata Majumdar and Gopinath Manna. They have working-class backgrounds and are in the Asian Games squad. I don’t think there is another team like the bridge team,” Keni says.