The Making of Shat Shat Vande Chess – Part 1
The Day Sassa Walked Through the Palace Gates
By Praful Zaveri

I began writing Shat Shat Vande Chess in August 2023.
At that time, there was no thought of animation.
No thought of cinema.
No thought of moving images.
There was only a manuscript — and a quiet question that had lived within me for years:
Why does the world not fully know where chess was born?

As the chapters unfolded — from Bharat in the Treta Yuga, to Mandodari’s strategic brilliance, to the journey of Chaturang across Persia and beyond — the book began to take shape.

Yet something felt unfinished.

In August 2024, nearly a year into writing, an unexpected thought arose:
Why should this remain only on paper?

There was no dramatic trigger.
It was simply my nature — once an idea takes root, it must be pursued.

Swami Vivekananda’s words have long inspired me:
“Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life; dream of it; think of it; live on that idea…”

But if I am honest, the true seed of the film was emotional.

For years, while teaching children, there was one chapter that always gave me goosebumps — The Unexpected Challenger.
The moment when the Brahmin sage Sassa arrives at the palace gates.
He is mocked.
He is dismissed.
He is warned.

And when Emperor Chandragupta places a condition before him — that if he loses, he will be beheaded before the entire court — Sassa does not hesitate.
He accepts.

Every time I narrated that moment in class, the room would grow silent.
There is something profoundly powerful about intellectual courage.
About standing at the gates of greatness — knowing the risk — and walking forward anyway.

One evening in August 2024, I suddenly saw it.
Not as text.
But as movement.
Sassa walking slowly through towering palace gates.
Guards watching.
Whispers filling the court.
A lone sage stepping forward into destiny.

That was the first image.

And in that instant, I knew:
This story must be seen. Not just read.

If a 10-year-old child could watch that moment unfold — could feel the tension, the silence, the resolve — perhaps they would understand something greater than chess.
They would understand conviction.

That was the beginning of the film.
Just a sage walking through palace gates… and an idea that refused to remain inside a book!