Caste and religion are left at the door of India’s traditional wrestling academies, where the pursuit of physical grace and brute force is a pathway out of poverty
By day Amol Patil, 23, is a security guard, standing in a sentry box outside a company office in Mumbai, his limbs coiled inside a polyester uniform. By evening, when he enters the hallowed square of the clay pit, he is released in a blaze of brute force.
Patil is a wrestler of the traditional Indian school of mud-clay wrestling called kushti which dates back to the Mughals and is passed down from generation to generation. Kushti is practiced in an akhara, or wrestling academy, where everything is governed by strict rules in an atmosphere of austerity.
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