Has Indian wrestling lost its lustre?

As Indian wrestling is mired in allegations of murder, sexual assault and injustice, the aura of 'kushti' and 'mitti' is fading

- Rudraneil Sengupta

My enduring memory of Sushil Kumar, the wrestler who won two Olympic medals and became one of India's greatest sporting icons, comes from a time before his spectacular downfall as an accused in the murder of another wrestler (for which he spent four years in jail as an undertrial before being granted bail in March).

It comes from that magic hour in an akhada, when, between the long, frenzied mat sessions in the morning and the never-ending, arduous physical conditioning workout in the evening, there is a happy lull—a time for food that always tastes delicious because the body is craving it, for meaningless banter (my memory is from pre-social media days), and extremely well-earned sleep, or in the words of the wrestlers, "ghoda bech ke so gaye" (sold his horses and went to sleep).

In Kumar's life, there were a couple of more things that happened during this four-hour rest and recovery period—as the "saviour" of India's great tradition of kushti, he had, for a controlled half-hour, a stream of visitors, and for another half hour, an interview with me for the book on Indian wrestling I was working on.

We kept to this routine for nearly three months, sitting in his rundown room under the rafters of Chattrasaal Stadium in Delhi, curtains drawn against the sun outside, a small refrigerator humming away in one corner, the smell of muscle spray and sweat, and the two of us talking about wrestling till he couldn't keep his eyes open any more.

"I'm giving you everything I've got," Kumar once told me. "This (interviews) is harder than fighting!"

Inevitably, just a few minutes before 4 pm, a bunch of children would barge into the room—"Wake up, it's time. You said you'll train with us. Wake up!"