This story is from July 22, 2017

Grappling to survive

Grappling to survive
Only six mud-pit akhadas remain in Kolkata, which once used to be a major centre of kushti. Now, there's very little support for the traditional sport, since the focus is on Oympics-rules wrestling. Jhimli Mukherjee Pandey reports, straight from the dangal sidelines
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Benoy, Badal and Dinesh used to regularly come here, and this place was a regular haunt of freedom fighters
None other than the great Dara Singh used to come here and practice in the mud pits, along with famous pehlwans like Anta Pehlwan, Baru Pehlwan, Bhagwandas Pehlwan and Basantu Pehlwan; this was the meeting place of legends
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Hanuman Pehlwan of the Arjun Vyayamshaala with members of the akhada.

Such stories — maybe apocryphal, maybe not, who knows — are common in the dark and dank kushti akhadas of Kolkata, where the smell of sweat on glistening, muscled bodies becomes inseparable from the aroma of freshly dug earth, and where harsh realities are woven with the stuff of legend. Kolkata, even two decades ago, used to be the centre of traditional kushti, with pehlwans from all over the world making a beeline to its akhadas to participate in high-voltage dangals (kushti competitions).

Today, only six mud-pit akhadas survive, all located within a two-kilometre radius of Burrabazar. Save for three of these, where mud wrestling still happens, the others are almost gone, save for the one day of the year — Nagpanchami — when all six of them come alive. Traditionally, Nagpanchami is the day when dangals are organized in akhadas all over the country, and the ones here are no exception. From the early hours of July 27, you will get to see a ringside view of pehlwans grappling with and pinning each other down in rare ‘dav-pench’ grips, that will definitely bring back flashes of the Aamir Khan-starrer that stirred imaginations even as far as distant China. Only, this is not reel life, but as real as it gets.
Times have changed, rue practitioners of this traditional sport. Today’s generation feels mud-wrestling is a colossal waste of time, an unfashionable option for keeping fit. A large number of akhadas, thus, have turned into gyms where young boys go for weight training. And there’s a very tangible class difference: the more money you have, the fancier the gym you go to.
The very few senior pehlwans who still cannot do without their morning and evening regimen of mud-wrestling, say that in the heydays of kushti, such class distinctions did not exist. North Kolkata was home to the rich gentry and the young scions of the most powerful families like the Tagores, Debs, Lahas, Mitras and Mullicks got trained under the akhada pehlwans. While pehlwans mostly visited their homes, it was not uncommon to see the nobility in horse-drawn carriages and, later, in motor cars, waiting outside akhadas for training sessions and also competitions. Keeping fit through wrestling was a part of the rich man’s daily regimen and there are many stories about Rabindranath himself and his brothers, Swami Vivekananda and, later, Netaji and other freedom fighters being avid wrestlers. Gobor Goho, a traditional wrestler in the first decades of the 20th century in Kolkata, stunned the world when he became the first Asian to win the World Light Heavyweight Championship in the US in 1921. The mud-pit akhada that Goho used was set up by his great-grandfather at Masjidbari Street, which still exists and is maintained by the family.
Cotton Street is a nondescript narrow lane, dark and dingy, not comfortable for a four-wheeler. But you will be surprised when you have crossed the threshold of the centuries old building at 126, Cotton Street and come face-to-face with one of the oldest akhadas of the country, maintained by the Yoganand Puri Math. Kushti practice starts here from as early as 4.30am and interestingly, most of those who come for their daily dose of exercise are pehlwans in their late 60s and 70s. Bhagwandas Kewat (72), a pehlwan from Varanasi, is a case in point. He is the seniormost guru here, who will tell you of the many wrestlers he has trained all his life. “Today, very few akhadas with mud pits are left. It is a dying tradition. Those who are still becoming wrestlers are joining the different clubs where they can learn on mats, following Olympics rules. So we are being forced to send our best boys for training on the mat in clubs,” he says. Bhagwandas shuttles between Varanasi and Kolkata and is often called to referee in the traditional wrestling circuits of Delhi, Haryana and UP, where mud wrestling competitions are still extremely popular in rural areas.
The site is home to hectic activity as the pit is being prepared for the big occasion on Nagpanchami. Ganga mitti is being brought in and mixed with the existing mud that has been turned in to make it supple yet firm, just the right consistency for mud-wrestling, so that one doesn’t slip and fall while taking position. There is a ratio of water, milk, red ochre, multani mitti, buttermilk, mustard oil, sandal powder, ghee, neem leaves and flower petals that are mixed into this mud to prepare it for competitions. One sees the 24-year-old Raja Singh, who has joined hands with the others at the akhada to prepare the soil, since pehlwans do this work themselves as labourers are not allowed to enter the ring.
Raja is a state-level wrestling champion and trains on the mat at a nearby club at Jorabagan, registered with the West Bengal Olympic Wrestling Association. “We also have Rohit Singh, who is the national No. 4 now. We are happy that these talented pehlwans have not left mud-wrestling. But since there is no patronage or recognition for us in Bengal, we will not survive very long. Elsewhere in north India, though we are not allowed to send mud wrestlers for state/national championships, there is no dearth of local competitions and adulation that keep us, the traditional pehlwans, alive,” says aide Manoj Sonkar, the akhada’s caretaker.
Adjacent to Tarasundari Park, not too far from here, is the Arjun Vyayamshaala, named after the legendary pehlwan Arjun Singh, who was a freedom fighter and was known to have been close to Netaji. Arjun Pehlwan of the Benaras gharana has gone down in history for leading freedom fighters against the Simon Commission in 1928. The akhada was frequented by freedom fighters and Netaji’s name features on top of the list along with that of Benoy, Badal and Dinesh. “We maintain the mud pit ourselves and are all set for Nagpanchami. At least 50 pehlwans have already confirmed participation and we will have drums and desi-style cymbals, along with pipes playing full throttle as the pehlwans go for their choicest dao-pench. In traditional kushti, we have barilla dao, kainchia dao, kanpattiya dao and then the very challenging dhobi pachhad,” says Hanuman Pehlwan, the guru of the akhada, showing off his 48-inch chest which, he says, was the result of a daily rigorous routine of five hours of kushti.
Ask anyone near Machhua who Nandu Paanwala is, and you will be led to this 72-year-old man with a smiling face, lacing one paan after another with lime and supari, as his customers keep swelling around his perch. One look at him will tell you that he is a wrestler, and he is very pleased to talk about kushti, keeping aside paan, his other love. At 4.30am, you will find him wrestling his mate, Jwala Pehlwan, on the banks of the Hooghly at the mud pit of Mullickghat, or the Jagannath Ghat flower market. The Siyaram Akhara has been here for the past 60 years, but before that, it has existed at Burrabazar’s Dhakaputty since the late 18th century. The akhada is associated with famous names in pehlwani like Nathmal Parikh and Siyaram Pehlwan, and has seen traditional wrestlers like Bansi Singh of Chhapra, Puransingh of Punjab, Baramdeb Mishra of Gorakhpur come and practice regularly. Jwala Pehlwan stays in rooms adjacent to the akhada on the ghat itself and opens the pit with a daily puja before dawn. He hails from Gorakhpur, which remains one of the country’s major kushti hubs. Jwala cannot stand the comparison between traditional and competitive wrestling. “Mud wrestling is India’s original strength. The state and the Centre should have patronized it at the competitive level. Instead, it is just the Olympics-approved mat wrestling that is being promoted. There is no reason to think that mud wrestlers do not have the skill for mat wrestling. There is just a slight difference in technique, because while in mud pits the winner has to pin down the opponent holding his back flat on the mud, in case of mat wrestling the winner has to win points on every move as he advances towards the finish,” Jwala explains.
So is he, an ace mud wrestler, able to perform on the mat? “Of course I can. Between 1991 and 2000, I was the Bengal champion in the 74kg, 85kg, 82kg and 97kg categories. In the national circuit, I have won against BSF and CRPF,” says Jwala, who is in his late 60s. “The idea is to learn the technique on mud, gain strength there and then practise the acquired skill on the mat. I did it myself and made my son do it too,” he adds. Suraj Kant Tewari has been Bengal champion from the time he competed in the 30kg championship to the time he went on to be 62kg, and ranks fourth nationally.
The mud-pit akhadas are crying out for support and recognition that is hard to come by at a time when even competitive wrestling is finding it difficult to get patronage and state support. “Five years ago, we were promised state recognition that would have got us special grants from the Sports Authority of India (SAI). But it is yet to come,” rues Asit Saha, former national-level wrestler and secretary of Panchanan Byayam Samity, a 150-year-old club at Jorabagan, which switched over to mat wrestling decades ago, to enter the national and international competition circuit following Olympic norms. Today, young wrestlers who might have started out at traditional akhadas but want to take up career wrestling come to this club to practice and learn the skills required to wrestle on the mat. “Below our expensive mat, we still have the mud arena. But it is of no use today because we would have also met with a slow death had we not changed,” Saha says. He belongs to a family of wrestlers that produced names like Sudhir Chandra Saha, the chief coach of the country at the Tokyo Olympics. Saha himself remained a state champion for 14 years uninterrupted and won silver in the national circuit and later trained as a coach from Iran.
The club doubles up as the West Bengal Wrestling Association, recognized by SAI, and has won 36 golds in national championships till date, apart from its biggest achievement — sending wrestlers K P Roy and Niranjan Das to the 1948 and 1952 Olympics. “Mud akhadas are our tradition, but its style is distinctly different from the demands of the Olympics, which had laid out its mat rules way back in 1804. A person trained on the mud pit might have great skills but tends to lose grip on the mat. We have time limits and points attached to specific moves — pinning down the opponent gets you four points, getting him down with knees on the ground gets you two points and ‘suplex’ gets you a full five. Traditional wrestlers have to get used to the Greco-Roman style,” he explains. Pehlwans pooh-pooh this, pointing out that they too have their inimitable dao-pench like the barilla dao, kainchia dao, kanpattiya dao and finally the dhobi pachhad, where the winner picks the opponent up and smashes him on the mud.
While crisis has hit the mud akhadas of Bengal, the scene is quite different in rural north India, where dangals are organized as weekend entertainment and a lot of money spins around it which, in turn, helps keep both pehlwans and akhadas in good shape. “I have been scouring akhadas in Haryana and UP to find out new ways to run and maintain our heritage mud akhada,” says Indroneel Goho, Gobor Goho’s grandson. The akhada that this family owns, off Beadon Street, is perhaps the best maintained mud akhada of the city, but Goho rues that though it has been churning out wrestlers, they are not able to enter state- or national-level championships because of lack of mat training.
“Perhaps we need to modernize a bit, without breaking off with our heritage/tradition,” Goho says.
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