NEW DELHI: Just after 8 pm, the bus left. Feeling hungry after eight hours on the road, Md Imran got off the bus during a scheduled ten-minute stop in Bratislava, Slovakia, just to buy biscuits and coffee. He made it back to the platform just in time, waving frantically for the driver to wait. The driver looked directly at him, waved contemptuously from his seat, and drove off.Everything Imran owned disappeared with that bus. His passport. His Schengen visa. His U.S. student visa is designed to allow him to attend a scholarship to the University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) this fall. His mobile phone, power bank, diary, and equipment worth nearly 600 to 700 thousand rupees. It all rolled to Budapest without him on the night before a tournament he still had to play last June. Imran, who is only 16 years old, is stranded alone in a foreign country. Thankfully, it turned out that being alone in a foreign country was something he’d been practicing for ten years.
A child who just watched TV
Imran didn’t start playing chess because anyone saw genius in him. He was introduced to television around the age of seven as his parents in Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh, wanted him to stay away from the screens.“I think it was introduced to me just to keep me away from various electronic devices as I was consuming a lot of electronic media at that time,” Imran told TimesofIndia.com in an exclusive interaction. “I was watching TV from morning to night.”Chess was one of several activities his parents tried for him. Skating, swimming and gymnastics are other sports, but this is the one that gets the most attention.
MD Imran (Special arrangement)
He started beating everyone at the local academy under coach Leela Kumar, who first suggested that he try out for the tournament. What happened next was an explosion rather than progress. In less than a year, Imran’s rating jumped from 1,035 points to 1,958 points with around 900 points.He looked at competitions abroad and prepared sponsorships worth two to three hundred thousand rupees to fund these competitions. Then COVID hit. Sponsorship evaporated.“When we asked about the amount, they said it was impossible,” he recalled. “Even their accidents were worse, so they couldn’t produce as much.”For two years, chess has moved almost entirely online.When off-field action resumes, Imran’s family have been excluded from adult-accompanied journeys. By 2023, he would occasionally travel abroad with friends or his mother. Then, in June 2024, at the age of 14, he began traveling completely alone.“The reason why I travel alone and choose to travel alone is just to reduce costs.” He said lightly. “If I could find one of my parents or a legal guardian … I’d have to pay the extra fee. We’re not in that situation at all.”
‘You soon realize the system has failed you’
What happens next reads less like a sports story and more like a survival narrative. Last month, Imran arrived in Budapest at midnight last night with nothing. The station was locked, so he couldn’t file a report. No hotel would accept him without a physical passport, as European law requires a passport at check-in.He ran to drivers from other bus companies for help. FlixBus chat support told him to complain online.He has a phone. He’s lucky.“Usually, I don’t,” he said of traveling with charging devices. “I travel with two phones and two power banks, but luckily I have my main phone in my hand. That’s my absolute lifeline.” “I made a series of formal complaints to FlixBus and the authorities, but I didn’t get a shred of help,” Imran said. “The cold hard fact is they did nothing and my conclusion is they are completely unreliable.”For most people, the story ends there. For Imran, it was the start of the first Saturday round-robin event, which he entered specifically to pursue Grandmaster standards. He had every reason to quit. He has a high fever. He spent the morning shuttling between the police station and the U.S. Embassy instead of preparing for vacancies. Regardless, he chose to play.He finished the tournament with 7/9, remaining undefeated and earning his first Grandmaster title. Later, a second standard appeared at the 5th Rigo Janos Memorial with the same 7/9 run.Three weeks ago, his rating was 2460, zero standards. He is now 2496 years old and only needs an open standard to complete the title.
About to become a master
“I never had real, sustained guidance,” he told SciDev.Net after returning to India after receiving a new passport. “I always felt like I was wasting money on them and they would never be able to devote the proper amount of time to me. So, I decided to do it all by myself.”In 2024, he became an international master on his own. He crossed 2500 on his own. Aside from brief, targeted help, the criteria are the same for both GMs: a stint with IM Radoslav Gajek between 2023 and 2025, and Israeli player Levin Guy, rated 2473, who reached out after learning of the Bratislava incident and offered to be his replacement for free.
Dr. Imran and his MD Norms (Special Arrangement)
The scale behind the rise of the self-taught is staggering in itself. According to his statistics, approximately 257 games were rated in 2024 and 283 games were rated in 2025, which were the highest-rated games in the world that year.“I would never advise anyone to go down this path,” he said. “I don’t even have an ideal resource for chess players to become IM. I contradict every ideal approach to chess improvement.”When asked what he would actually tell someone trying to follow his path: “The only thing you need is you have to believe in yourself,” he said. “If you believe in God, then of course you have to believe in God and not yourself. After that, you have to believe in yourself. That’s it.”
A family of four and a debt that started long before the bus came.
Imran’s family is small relative to its size: his mother is a housewife; his father has been a police officer for 22 years and is currently stationed in Visakhapatnam; and he has a brother who is four years younger than him.“We are not in a very sound financial position or otherwise,” Imran said. “I think we even have a loan of about Rs 40, Rs 50 lakh that my father took out in the last two years.” Bratislava’s losses were simply piled on top. “There’s no better place than here,” he said. “Even after I met those two standards, we still faced a lot of difficulties.”
“That’s the first thing why I slowly started to lose interest in chess,
International Master Dr. Imran
When Imran became an international master two years ago, he hoped his form would attract attention. He said Andhra Pradesh had not produced IM for seven or eight years and the state’s own sports policy promised cash incentives for FM and IM titles. Imran and his family applied a year and a half ago.“So far we haven’t had any help raising this money,” he said. “I have no idea.”This silence, more than the bus in Bratislava, has truly eroded his relationship with football.“That was the first thing that slowly started to make me lose interest in chess,” he admits. “The only people who respect my situation and my position are the U.S. Chess Team,” he said of his UTRGV scholarship.He now describes his relationship with the sport in strikingly neutral terms: “I don’t necessarily like chess, but I don’t hate it either. I just want to finish this title. I don’t have any huge passion behind it. It’s just because I don’t have the same support as other people. “
Help hotline
He now has a new passport; his Schengen visa application is under review. His F-1 visa had been approved before the tragedy occurred. The visa needs to be re-issued by the US Consulate into his new passport.Also read: India welcomes its 98th general manager! Both parents are chess coaches, 10th board exams put on hold: The making of Aswath SHe emailed the embassy in Budapest and the consulate in Hyderabad, noting the emergency, but received no response from either, leaving him without a confirmed path or timetable for reissuing his visa before the August 23 induction deadline.“I really hope someone can help me in any way possible,” he said. “I really hope I can get my visa before then because I absolutely can’t miss it.”
