Akhilism of Wearable Utilitarianism

How a celebrated chess Grandmaster's son is turning maths, myth and animals into a new oeuvre of attirement

- SHILPI MADAN

At first glance, Akhil Anand looks like any other 14-year-old with a sketchbook. But hand him a pen and a pile of geometry, and you'll witness something quietly radical—a mind that bends maths into mandalas, endangered animals into caped crusaders, and centuries-old art styles into modern merch. The Chennai teen calls it Akhilism—an ever-evolving world of patterns, creatures, stories, and sharp lines where art is both a canvas and a conscience.

Blame the brainy genes. Son of chess grandmaster Viswanathan Anand and arts educator Aruna Anand, Akhil grew up in a home where logic and imagination weren't at odds—they danced together. "Numbers were never scary," he says, casually flipping through a sketchbook of elephants reimagined as protectors of forests, each trunk curling into spirals of Fibonacci perfection. "Appa used to make me solve logic puzzles for fun, and Amma always filled bedtime with stories of gods, painters, and wild animals. Somewhere in the middle, I started drawing my own versions."