BENGALURU: A 22-year-old grandmaster, one of the strongest players on the planet, lying flat on a hotel bed with his leg propped up on a pillow, calculating variations against a World Championship challenger sitting upright across the board. That was Alireza Firouzja’s reality for a stretch of tournaments earlier this year, a fallout from an ankle injury. It was surreal.“I just stepped wrongly,” Firouzja, now 23, told TimesofIndia.com, recalling the moment that caught the chess world’s attention during the Super Chess Classic in Bucharest, Romania, earlier this year in May. “I wanted to come down from the stage, and I stepped wrongly, and I twisted my ankle.”Just a wrong step off a stage, except this time it happened to someone with a full tournament calendar and no real option to simply rest up.The injury first sidelined his movement during the Grand Chess Tour leg in Romania, which he described as the low point of the entire saga. “Romania was the most annoying part, because I had to lie on the bed and keep the feet up,” he added.Things improved slightly by the time he reached Norway Chess, where he was on crutches but was at least able to sit behind the board again.“In Norway already I could sit behind the table,” he said. But Romania was the stretch that tested him most. Among those opponents was Javokhir Sindarov, now the World Championship challenger who will face Gukesh later this year.Asked directly what it actually felt like, calculating chess from a horizontal position, leg elevated, unable to sit up properly, he didn’t hide his annoyance.“It was very unpleasant,” he revealed. ” But I just wanted to play, because it was a good opportunity. But after two rounds, I just said, it’s enough. It was impossible to play.”He’s since made a full recovery. “It’s fully recovered,” he confirmed.Back in India, and clearly enjoying itThe bed-and-pillow chapter is behind him, but Firouzja’s relationship with Indian crowds has become one of the more consistent threads of his year.This is his second trip to the country in the space of three to four months. He won the Chennai Grand Masters tournament in July before arriving for the Global Chess League (GCL) here in Bengaluru, where he plays for two-time champions Triveni Continental Kings.“India, always, whenever I come, people are very interested in what we do, and it’s very good,” he said, when asked about the reception. “I’ve been this year two times already, I was in Chennai, now here, and last year I was in Mumbai (for GCL).”The food, apparently, has made an impression too. Revealing what he enjoys the most, Firouzja said, “I like the chicken tandoori and stuff.”On Gukesh vs SindarovWith Sindarov set to challenge Gukesh for the World Championship, Firouzja, who has played both multiple times in different formats of the game so far, offered his assessment of the upcoming clash in Geneva.“I think it will be a close match, probably,” he added. “I don’t know, anything could happen.”Alireza, an Iranian-French grandmaster, became the youngest player to surpass a FIDE rating of 2800, achieving it at 18 years and 5 months in November 2021, breaking Magnus Carlsen’s previous record of 18 years and 11 months.Despite achieving so much at a young age, he was more expansive on just how hard the road to World Championship match actually is, having walked much of it himself.“You have to play a lot, and you have to always be in your best shape,” he said of qualifying through the Candidates Tournament. “And Candidates, in these two weeks, you have to play your best. It’s a hard journey. It’s good to try.”What’s next for Firouzja?As for where he heads after GCL, Firouzja confirmed his next major stop remains the Total Chess Championship, which is set to be held from November 10 to 21, 2026, at the Anantara New York Palace Hotel in Budapest, Hungary.Between a freak ankle injury, a full recovery, two trips to India in under half a year, a taste for tandoori chicken, and a top-level chess schedule, the image that will stick, though, is the one from Romania.