The classroom falls into a tense hush as Vaishnavi hovers over a rook, her mind flickering through numerous possibilities before her fingers finally move. Until weeks ago, the Class 8 student at the Zilla Parishad High School (ZPHS) in Wazeedu of Telangana’s Mulugu district had long feared even touching a chess board. But today, she spends at least an hour every day returning to the 64 squares, plotting strategies she once thought she could never grasp.

Her confidence grew as she realised she was no outlier; around 70 of the 150 students in Classes 7 and 8 at this government school, located nearly 300 km from Hyderabad near the Chhattisgarh border in a region known for Maoist activity, have been now gathering around the chequered boards daily, turning chess into an unlikely routine on cam

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