NEW DELHI: The bus left after 8 PM. Md Imran, hungry after eight hours on the road, disembarked at a ten-minute stopover in Bratislava, Slovakia, wanting only biscuits and coffee. He returned to the platform in no time and waved wildly for the driver to wait. The driver looked straight at him, shook his seat mockingly, and drove away.Everything that Imran had disappeared with that bus. His passport. His Schengen visa. His US student visa, which was supposed to take him to the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) this fall. His phone, his power banks, his diary, around Rs 6 – 7 lakh worth of electricity. Everything is going on in Budapest without him, the night before the tournament he was supposed to play last June. At just 16 years old, Imran was alone in a foreign land. Fortunately, being alone in a foreign country was something he had already had for ten years.
The child who was watching TV
Imran didn’t start playing chess because everyone thought he was stupid. He started at the age of seven because his parents, in Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh, wanted him to stay out of the limelight.“I think it was only introduced to me that made me stay away from any kind of electronic devices, because at that time I was using a lot of electronic devices,” Imran told TimesofIndia.com in an interview. “I was watching TV from morning to night.”Chess was one of several things his parents tried for him; skating, swimming, and gymnastics were others, but they were the ones that stuck.
Md Imran (Special Arrangements)
He started beating everyone in his local school under the guidance of teacher Leela Kumar, who first suggested him to try sports. The next step was to explode and not continue. In less than a year, Imran scored almost 900 points, jumping from 1035 to 1958.He was looking at foreign sports and had lined up two or three lakhs of money to support them. Then COVID hit. The support waned.“When we asked them about the money, they said it was impossible,” he recalled. “Even their problems have gotten worse, so they can’t get the money out.”Chess, for two years, moved almost exclusively online.When the on-board festivities resumed, Imran’s family had already been bought into the trip with the big man accompanying him. Through 2023, he sometimes traveled abroad with friends or his mother. Then, in June 2024, at the age of 14, he started walking alone.“The only reason I traveled alone and chose to travel alone was to cut costs,” he said plainly. “If I could find one of my parents or a legal guardian… I would have to pay someone else.
‘You realize very quickly when systems fail’
What happened next seems less like a game story and more like a story of survival. Last month, Imran arrived in Budapest in the middle of the night empty-handed. The station was closed, so he could not report. No hotel will accept him without a passport, as European law requires him to enter.He ran to drivers from other bus companies, asking for help. FlixBus chat support told him to file a complaint online.He had a phone. He was lucky about it.“Normally, I don’t,” he said of traveling with a portable device. “I went with two phones and two power banks, but luckily, I came out with my big phone in my hand. That was my life.” “I made many complaints to FlixBus and the authorities, but I didn’t get any help,” said Imran. “The cold truth is that they didn’t do anything, and my point is that they’re not really trustworthy.”For most people, this is where the story ends. For Imran, it was the starting line for Saturday’s First Round of Robin, a race where he was going to chase a Grandmaster routine. He had good reasons to leave. He had a high fever. He spent the morning walking between the police station and the US Ambassadors instead of preparing for openings. He chose to play anyway.He finished 7/9, undefeated, and took his first Grandmaster routine. After that, the second routine came with a 7/9 run at the 5th Rigo Janos Memorial.Three weeks earlier, he was rated 2460 and zero. Now at 2496, he needs one more open practice to complete the title.
On the brink of becoming a Grandmaster
“I’ve never had a real, consistent education,” he, who has now returned to India with a new passport, told the website. “I always felt like I was just wasting money on them, and they couldn’t give me the time I needed. So, I decided to do everything myself.”He became the only World Champion in 2024. He passed 2500 alone. All the traditions of the GM came in the same way, except for a brief, direct support: stretching with IM Radoslav Gajek between 2023 and 2025, and Levin Guy, the Israeli footballer rated 2473, who arrived after learning about the event in Bratislava and gave him a second free.
Md Imran and his GM status (Special Arrangements)
The volume behind the self-taught ride is self-distraction. About 257 games were rated in 2024 and 283 in 2025, with his account, the best player in the world that year.“I would not recommend anyone to go this route,” he said. “I didn’t have a single tool that a player should have even to be an IM. I was against every good strategy for chess.”When asked what he would tell someone trying to follow his path: “The only thing you need is to believe in yourself,” he said. “If you believe in God, then you have to believe in God more than yourself. After all, you have to believe in yourself. That’s it.”
A family of four, and a loan that has yet to come
Imran’s family is small compared to the scale of what he carries: his mother, a housekeeper; his father, a 22-year-old police officer now in Visakhapatnam; and his younger brother, four years later.“We don’t know whether it’s financially sound or not,” Imran said. “I think we owe 40, 50 lakhs of loans that my father took in the last two years.” The loss of Bratislava is only placed on top of it. “There’s nowhere better,” he said. “We are really in a lot of trouble even now that I have fulfilled these two conditions.”
“This is the first thing that I slowly began to lose interest in chess,
International Master Md Imran
When Imran became an International Coach two years ago, he expected his country to take notice. Andhra Pradesh has not held IM in seven or eight years, he said, and its sports policy promises cash prizes for FM and IM titles. Imran and his family filed the suit a year and a half ago.“So far we have not received any help to get the money,” he said. “I don’t know.”That silence, more than the bus in Bratislava, is what strained his relationship with the game.“This is the first thing that I slowly started to lose interest in chess,” he admitted. “The only people who respected my situation and respected my position were the US chess team,” he said of his UTRGV scholarship.He describes his relationship with the game now in neutral terms: “I don’t really like chess, but I don’t hate it. I just want to finish this chapter. I don’t have a big passion behind me. It’s because of the support I didn’t get like other people. “
Calling for help
He now has a new passport; his Schengen visa application is under review. His F-1 visa was already approved before the bus accident. The visa must be reissued in his new passport by the US embassy.ALSO READ: India will get 98th GM! All the parents of chess coaches, 10 board exams forced a break: The creation of Aswath SHe emailed the embassy in Budapest and the embassy in Hyderabad, declaring an emergency, but they did not respond, leaving him with no means or time to ensure that the visa was renewed before the August 23 deadline.“I really need someone to help me, in any way they can,” she said. “I hope I can get a visa before that, because I can’t miss it.”
